BOOKS  BY   DR.  JEFFERSON 

Quiet  Talks  with  the  Family 
Quiet  Talks  with  Earnest  People 
Quiet  Hints,  to  Growing  Preachers 
The  Minister  as  Prophet 
The  Minister  as  Shepherd 

Doctrine  and  Deed 
Things  Fundamental 
The  Character  of  Jesus 

Building  of  the  Church 

Why  We  may  Believe  in  Life  After  Death 

Talks  on  PIigh  Themes 

The  Cause  of  the  War 

A  Fire  in  the  Snow 

The  Land  of  Enough 


/  V 

(      Ma,, 

w 

THE   MINISTER  AS^       ^ 
PROPHET 


BY 


CHARLES   EDWARD  JEFFERSON 

Pastor  of  the  Broadway  Tabernacle 
IN  New  York  City 


NEW  YORK 

THOMAS  Y.   CROWELL  COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 


t  7c 


Copyright,  1905, 
By  THOMAS  Y.  CROWELL  &  CO. 

Fifth  Thousand 


THE  LrEORGE   SHEPARD 
LECTURES   ON   PREACHING 

at  Bangor  SEjiwlogtcal  Seminarg 
1904-1905 


CONTENTS 
I 


PAGE 

THE  DIMENSIONS  OF  THE  WORK   .        .        i 


11 

THE  THREE  MEN  INVOLVED     ...      39 

in 

THE  GROWING  OF  SERMONS      .        „        .      75 

IV 
FORM  AND   MANNER in 

V 

THE   PLACE  OF  DOGMA   IN   PREACHING     146 


THE  MINISTER  AS   PROPHET 


I 

The  DimensiGns  of  the  Work 

A  MINISTER  of  the  Gospel  is  expected 
to.  do  a  wider  variety  of  things  than  any 
other  man  in  the  community.  The  divi- 
sion of  labor  has  been  carried  farther  in 
every  other  profession  than  in  the  minis- 
try. His  work  is  multiform,  and  it  is 
impossible  in  five  brief  lectures  to  cover 
more  than  a  small  fraction  of  it. 

Tlie  minister  is  an  administrator.  His 
church  is  an  organization,  and  like  all 
organizations  it  must  have  an  executive 
head.  The  minister  is  that  head.  It  is 
in  one  sense  a  machine,  and  hke  all 
machines  must  be  run.  Friction  must  be 
reduced,  the  wheels  must  be  lubricated, 
repairs  must  be  made,  every  part  of  the 


2  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

mechanism  must  be  subjected  to  constant 
scrutiny  and  supervision,  in  order  that 
the  machine  may  do  the  work  for  which 
it  has  been  created.  The  work  of  ad- 
ministration is  of  great  importance,  but 
into  that  kingdom  we  cannot  enter  now. 

The  minister  is  a  pastor,  a  shepherd 
of  the  flock.  He  must  tend  and  feed 
the  sheep.  He  must  know  them  all  by 
name,  and  he  must  know  also  their  dis- 
positions, needs,  and  habits,  and  knowing 
these  he  must  be  acquainted  with  the 
pastures  where  the  grass  is  greenest  and 
most  abundant,  and  he  must  know  where 
the  most  refreshing  waters  flow,  and  he 
must  know  the  character  and  the  methods 
of  the  enemies  by  which  the  flock  is  most 
likely  to  be  attacked.  The  work  of  shep- 
herding is  of  vast  concern,  but  into  this 
province  we  cannot  go. 

The  minister  is  a  priest ;  he  officiates 
at  the  altar  of  worship.  He  is  the  spokes- 
man of  the  people  as  they  offer  up  their 
sacrifice  of  praise  and  prayer.     He  leads 


The  Dime7isions  of  the  Work  3 

the  congregation  to  the  throne  of  grace. 
Upon  his  lips  the  desires  and  thoughts 
of  many  hearts  become  vocal.  He  reads 
the  scriptures,  interpreting  by  emphasis 
and  intonation  the  revelation  which  has 
come  through  holy  men  of  old.  While 
he  does  not  lead  the  singing,  it  is  for 
him  to  decide  what  shall  be  the  character 
and  amount  of  the  music  in  which  the 
church  shall  express  its  adoration  and 
thanksgiving.  He  is  the  ordained  minis- 
trant  in  the  service  in  which  the  Lord's 
people  bear  public  testimony  to  their  faith, 
and  to  him  is  intrusted  the  entire  conduct 
of  worship  in  the  house  of  prayer.  It  is 
a  critical  and  difficult  work,  but  into  this 
wide  region  we  cannot  make  our  way. 

The  minister  is  a  moral  and  reHgious 
leader.  As  a  guide  he  has  relations  not 
only  to  his  own  congregation,  but  to  the 
entire  denomination  of  which  he  is  a  repre- 
sentative, and  to  the  church  universal  of 
which  he  is  a  member,  and  not  only  does 
he  have  relations  to  organized  Christianity, 


4  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

but  he  Ls  related  to  the  great  philan- 
'  thropic  and  reformatory  movements  of 
his  age,  and  belongs  in  a  special  sense  to 
the  entire  community  in  the  midst  of 
which  he  does  his  work.  All  these  rela- 
tions bring  with  them  unescapable  obliga- 
tions and  multitudinous  duties.  The  work 
of  minister  as  patriot  and  citizen  is  one 
of  far-reaching  influence  and  significance, 
but  from  all  this  territory  we  are  for  the 
time  shut  out. 

The  minister  is  a  prophet  of  the  Lord. 
By  prophet  is  meant  a  man  who  speaks 
for  God.  He  is  preeminently  a  speaker. 
His  business  is  to  speak  for  another.  He 
is  a  truth-teller,  and  therefore  first  of  all  i 
ti  iith-seekcr.  He  nmst  dig  for  it  ^-s  i\>r 
hidden  treasures,  and  having  found  it,  he 
must  coin  it  and  put  it  into  circulation 
among  the  people.  Like  a  Moses,  he  must 
go  up  into  the  mountain  and  talk  with  God 
face  to  face,  coming  down  and  giving  to 
his  brethren  his  latest  revelation.  He  is  a 
missionary  intrusted  with  the  good  news, 


The  Dimensions  of  the  Work  5 

and  he  must  speak  his  message  without 
diminution  or  any  blurring  of  its  contents. 
He  is  an  ambassador  sent  from  the  court 
of  heaven  to  the  court  of  earth,  and  his 
life  is  one  long  and  passionate  appeal  to 
men  to  become  reconciled  to  God. 

This  work  of  speakinf  f  3-  God  is  only  a 
part  of  the  nioaern  riimisccr'^.  duty,  but  it 
is  a  realm  of  such  wide  dimensions  that 
we  shall  be  justified  in  confining  our  atten- 
tion exclusively  to  it.  But  in  passing  over 
all  the  other  departments  of  ministerial 
activity  and  shutting  ourselves  up  with 
preaching  alone,  I  would  not  have  any  one 
of  you  think  that  these  other  forms  of 
work  hold  in  my  mind  a  place  of  compara- 
tive unimportance,  or  that  in  my  judgment 
a  minister  can  shirk  all  his  duties  but  that 
of  preaching  and  still  accomplish  the  work 
which  God  has  given  him  to  do.  If  time 
allowed,  I  could  speak  for  five  evenings  on 
each  branch  of  work  to  which  reference 
has  been  made,  and  still  be  unable  to  say 
all  that  can  reasonably  be  said  about  their 


6  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

importance  to  a  minister  who  wishes  to 
be  a  workman  that  needeth  not  to  be 
ashamed. 

My  ground  for  directing  your  attention 
especially  to  preaching  is  not  because  I 
underestimate  the  other  forms  of  ministe- 
rial duty,  or  because  I  would  have  you 
ignore  them  in  your  own  thought  and 
work ;  but  because  there  are  just  now  sev- 
eral special  reasons  why  a  minister  of  the 
Gospel  should  give  himself  with  renewed 
zeal  to  the  great  work  of  preaching.  The 
considerations  which  have  led  me  thus  to 
limit  the  scope  of  these  lectures  are :  — 
t^  I.  The  work  of  preaching  is  the  most 
difficult  of  all  the  things  which  a  minister 
is  called  to  do.  Indeed,  it  is  the  most 
difficult  task  to  which  any  mortal  can  set 
himself.  It  is  at  once  the  most  strenuous 
and  the  most  exacting  of  all  forms  of  labor. 
It  requires  a  fuller  combination  of  faculties 
and  a  finer  balance  of  powers  than  are  re- 
quired in  any  other  department  of  human 
effort.     It  is  a  difficult  thing  to  paint  a 


The  Dimensions  of  the  Work  7 

portrait.  To  gain  the  skill  required  to 
place  the  features  of  the  human  face  on 
the  canvas  in  such  a  way  as  that  they  shall 
breathe  and  speak  requires  the  unflagging 
toil  of  years,  but  how  much  more  difficult 
it  is  with  human  words  to  paint  the  face 
of  Christ  so  that  he  shall  woo  and  win  the 
hearts  of  men. 

It  is  a  difficult  thing  to  master  the 
mysteries  of  the  world  of  tone,  and  create 
harmonies  and  melodies  which  will  set 
the  nerves  a-tingling,  but  much  more  diffi- 
cult it  is  to  catch  the  music  of  the  world 
eternal  and  translate  it  into  human  speech 
so  that  human  hearts  on  which  it  falls 
shall  give  back  the  same  celestial  vibra- 
tions. It  is  a  great  thing  to  chisel  the 
marble  into  forms  which  seem  alive,  but 
immeasurably  more  difficult  it  is  to  chisel 
character  by  means  of  words  into  forms 
which  will  please  the  King.  It  is  a  difficult 
thing  to  act  upon  the  stage,  to  interpret 
adequately  the  lines  of  the  masters  of  the 
drama.     One  of  the  greatest  living  actors, 


8  The  Minister  as  P?vpket 

now  over  seventy  years  of  age,  says  that 
he  began  to  study  the  art  of  acting  v/hen 
a  boy  of  three,  and  that  he  is  studying  it 
still.  But  how  much  more  study  and  prac- 
tice is  required  for  the  right  rendering  to 
human  hearts  of  the  thoughts  and  purposes 
of  God.  The  lawyer  has  a  difficult  work. 
It  is  hard  to  apply  human  law  to  all  the 
tangled  and  complicated  affairs  of  men, 
but  to  apply  the  law  is  not  half  so  difficult 
as  it  is  to  apply  the  Gospel.  The  work  of 
the  physician  is  arduous,  and  without  skill 
and  knowledge  he  is  nothing ;  but  to  minis- 
ter to  a  mind  sin-sick,  to  soothe  a  con- 
science crying  out  in  pain,  "  to  pluck  from 
the  memory  a  rooted  sorrow  "  and  "  raze 
out  the  written  troubles  of  the  brain  "  and 
*'  cleanse  the  stuff'd  bosom  of  that  perilous 
stuff  which  weighs  upon  the  heart"  —  this 
requires  a  skill  and  knowledge  and  wisdom 
and  power  greater  than  any  which  the 
doctors  know.  Because  the  work  of 
preaching  is  so  difficult  is  my  first  reason 
for  speaking  to  you  about  nothing  else. 


The  Dimensions  of  the  Work         9 

2.  But  notwithstanding  the  work  is 
above  all  others  difficult,  ministers  are  just 
now  in  danger  of  receiving  less  help  in  mas- 
tering the  art  of  preaching  than  in  learning 
any  other  form  of  work.  Fresh  emphasis 
is  being  placed  on  the  work  of  administra- 
tion. With  the  increasing  complexity  of 
human  life  the  church  as  a  machine  is  be- 
coming more  and  more  intricate.  Social 
and  industrial  problems  are  at  the  front, 
and  expert  hands  seem  to  be  more  needed 
than  instructive  tongues.  The  minister's 
study  has  fallen  into  the  background,  and 
the  minister's  office  is  the  place  in  which 
he  is  expected  to  do  his  work.  In  a  com- 
mercial age  it  is  assumed  that  a  clergyman 
must  have  the  knack  of  doing  things,  and 
the  business  aspect  of  religion  is  the  one 
which  is  uppermost  in  the  public  mind. 

Along  with  this  new  emphasis  on  admin- 
istration there  is  fresh  interest  in  cere- 
monialism. Our  forms  of  worship  are 
discovered  to  be  altogether  too  colorless 
and  too  bare  to   suit  a  generation  which 


10  The  M mister  as  Prophet 

has  developed  all  the  nerves  of  taste,  and 
so  men  are  discussing  everywhere  the 
advisability  of  enriching  the  forms  of  ser- 
vice. There  is  a  widespread  feeling  that 
the  forms  must  be  more  stately,  dignified, 
and  elaborate,  and  that  the  advantages  of 
a  liturgy  without  its  dangers  are  within 
the  reach  of  every  church.  But  with  this 
increased  emphasis  on  the  value  and  place 
of  liturgy  there  is  a  slackening  sense  in 
many  quarters  of  the  value  of  the  sermon. 
As  music  increases  the  sermon  decreases, 
and  many  a  student  for  the  ministry  is  to- 
day more  concerned  about  the  ordering  of 
worship  than  about  the  creation  of  effective 
sermons. 

Even  in  our  seminaries,  which  are  in 
theory  schools  in  which  men  are  trained 
to  preach,  the  multiplication  of  new  and 
fascinating  studies  has  had  a  tendency 
to  throw  homiletics  into  the  shade.  Ar- 
chaeology, historical  criticism,  and  soci- 
ology have  but  recently  come  to  their  best 
estate,  and  the  worlds  which  they  bring  to 


The  Dimensions  of  the  Work        1 1 

our  attention  are  so  vast  and  stimulating 
and  important  that  it  is  not  to  be  wondered 
at  that  many  a  student  is  far  more  inter- 
ested in  the  latest  results  of  criticism  and 
research  than  in  the  art  of  presenting  New- 
Testament  ideas  in  such  a  way  as  to  open 
the  springs  of  the  heart  and  turn  the 
streams  of  conduct  into  new  channels. 

Moreover,  there  is  a  widespread  feeling 
that  preaching  as  an  institution  is  more  or 
less  obsolescent.  Sermons,  men  say,  have 
had  their  day.  Just  as  our  national  Con- 
gress has  ceased  to  be  the  arena  for  in- 
teresting and  instructive  debate,  so  the 
Christian  pulpit  has  ceased  to  be  a  center 
to  which  men  look  for  either  instruction  or 
for  uplift.  And  so  the  preacher  is  in  dis- 
repute. Coleridge  once  said  that  in  "  older 
times  writers  were  looked  up  to  as  inter- 
mediate beings  between  angels  and  men ; 
afterwards  they  were  regarded  as  vener- 
able and  perhaps  inspired  teachers ;  subse- 
quently they  descended  to  the  level  of 
learned    and    instructive  friends;   but  in 


12  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

modern    days   they   are    deemed   culprits 
more  than  benefactors." 

A  similar  process  has  been  going  on 
in  the  public  mind  concerning  preachers. 
Once  they  were  more  than  human,  then 
supremely  human,  later  on  interesting 
and  useful,  but  more  recently  they  are 
regarded  in  many  sections  of  society  as 
impertinences  and  bores.  The  opinion 
of  the  world  cannot  fail  to  influence  the 
thought  and  feeling  of  ministers  them- 
selves. It  is  not  uncommon  to  hear 
ministers  speak  in  disparaging  and  apolo- 
getic tones  about  their  sermons.  And 
even  though  they  say  nothing  slightingly 
with  their  lips,  the  place  which  they  give 
the  sermon  in  their  thought  and  prepara- 
tion reveals  only  too  clearly  that  they  have 
lost  their  faith  in  its  importance  and  their 
ambition  to  make  it  what  a  sermon  ought 
to  be.  Rome  was  near  her  fall  when  the 
priests  who  ministered  at  her  altars  joked 
about  the  mass.  It  is  a  sign  of  skepticism 
and   decadence   in   the   Protestant   pulpit 


The  Dimensions  of  the   Work        13 

that  so  many  ministers  can  joke  about 
their  sermons  and  listen  to  attacks  upon 
the  work  of  preaching  without  indignant 
protest  or  swift  rebuke. 

3.  The  greatest  danger  confronting  the 
church  of  Christ  in  America  to-day  is  a 
possible  decadence  of  the  pulpit.  Let  the 
pulpit  decay,  and  the  cause  of  Christ  is  lost. 
Nothing  can  take  the  place  of  preaching. 
There  is  no  power  under  heaven  equal  to 
the  power  of  a  God-inspired  pulpit.  An- 
thems and  hymns,  responsive  readings 
and  creed  recitations,  prayers  written  and 
prayers  extempore,  all  have  their  place, 
and  when  rightly  used  are  means  of  grace ; 
but  all  of  them  put  together  cannot  take 
the  place  of  the  exposition  of  God's  word 
by  a  man  whose  lips  have  been  touched 
by  a  coal  from  off  God's  altar.  An  ig- 
norant pulpit  is  the  worst  of  all  scourges. 
An  ineffective  pulpit  is  the  most  lamenta- 
ble of  all  scandals.  The  cause  of  Christ 
is  hopelessly  handicapped  and  blocked 
when    Christian    preachers     forget    how 


14  TJie  Minister  as  Prophet 

to  preach.  We  must  guard  the  pulpit 
with  all  diligence,  for  out  of  it  are  the 
issues  of  life.  Any  signs  of  decay  in  it 
must  fill  all  well-wishers  of  the  church 
with  regret  and  alarm. 

And  history  will  not  allow  us  to  escape 
the  fact  that  it  is  easy  for  the  pulpit  to 
decay.  The  prophet  has  always  had  a 
tendency  to  degenerate  into  the  priest. 
The  man  who  speaks  for  God  is  always 
prone  to  slip  down  into  the  man  who 
performs  ceremonies  for  God.  The  alti- 
tudes on  which  the  prophet  of  the  Lord 
must  live  are  so  lofty  that  poor,  frail 
human  nature,  finding  it  exhausting  to 
breathe  the  difficult  air,  seeks  the  first 
opportunity  to  come  down.  But  every 
.  time  the  prophet  degenerates  into  a  priest 
a  new  darkness  falls  upon  the  world. 
There  were  great  prophets  in  Israel  in 
Elijah's  day  and  in  Isaiah's  day  and  in 
Haggai's  day,  but  little  by  little  the  light 
of  prophecy  died  down,  the  men  who 
spoke  for  God  became  interested  in   in- 


The  Dimensions  of  the   Work        15 

cense  and  burnt  offerings,  and  when  the 
last  of  the  prophets  departed,  darkness  fell 
on  Palestine. 

The  Christian  church  began  in  a  blaze 
of  glory — in  the  glory  that  burst  from 
a  sermon.  For  a  season  the  church  had 
great  preachers,  —  Tertullians  and  Chrys- 
ostoms,  Augustines  and  Ambroses,  —  but 
gradually  the  prophetic  fire  died  down, 
instead  of  the  preacher  there  was  only 
the  priest,  and  the  world  was  in  dark- 
ness again.  The  Reformation  was  ush- 
ered in  by  a  mighty  preacher,  —  Martin 
Luther,  —  a  man  educated  to  be  a  priest, 
but  who,  by  the  grace  of  God,  grew  to  the 
stature  of  a  preacher.  So  long  as  Luther 
and  Calvin  and  Latimer  and  Knox,  and 
the  mighty  men  who  came  after  them, 
kept  the  pulpit  fires  burning,  the  world 
rolled  more  and  more  into  light,  and  it 
was  daybreak  everywhere.  But  when 
the  preachers  slid  down  into  pedants, 
there  was  darkness  once  more  on  the 
earth. 


1 6  llie  Minister  as  Prophet 

England  in  the  eighteenth  century  was 
dead,  and  it  was  a  preacher  —  John  Wes- 
ley—who raised  the  dead  and  ushered 
in  a  new  epoch  of  Christian  history. 
Has  not  America  had  the  same  experi- 
ence ?  Did  we  not  start  with  Cotton 
and  Hooker  and  Shepard  and  EHot  and 
the  Mathers,  and  did  not  the  people  who 
sat  in  the  shadow  of  great  hardships  see 
a  wonderful  hght  ?  And  when  the  light 
faded,  it  was  because  the  great  preachers 
were  dead ;  and  there  was  no  life  and  no 
light  in  New  England  till  an  English- 
man, George  Whitefield,  and  an  Ameri- 
can, Jonathan  Edwards,  stood  in  the 
pulpit,  like  anointed  princes  of  God,  and 
spoke  once  more  to  the  people,  in  burning 
accents,  the  message  of  redemption.  The 
bones  in  the  valley  of  death  have  always 
taken  to  themselves  flesh  and  stood  erect 
on  their  feet,  and  the  water  has  always 
gushed  out  of  the  rock,  and  new  heavens 
have  always  bent  over  a  new  earth  when- 
ever and  wherever  a  man  has  appeared 


The  Dimensions  of  the  Work        1 7 

who  was  able  to  convert  the  pulpit  into  a 
throne. 

4.  If  this  is  the  great  danger  of  the 
Christian  church,  then  we  know  what  is 
its  great  need.  The  churches,  from  the 
Atlantic  to  the  Pacific,  are  crying  out  for 
preachers.  It  is  a  question  often  debated 
whether  there  is  a  call  for  more  ministers ; 
but  however  that  may  be,  there  is  no 
doubt  that  there  is  an  ever  increasing 
demand  for  more  preachers.  Why  do 
churches  with  fifty  or  one  hundred  appli- 
cants for  their  pulpit  wait  for  months  and 
sometimes  for  years  before  they  can  find 
the  man  they  want  1  It  is  sometimes  be- 
cause in  the  whole  crowd  of  applicants 
there  is  not  one  man  who  knows  how  to 
preach.  No  man  who  knows  how  to 
preach  with  grace  and  power  need  stand 
idle  in  the  market-place  a  single  hour. 
Churches  are  scouring  the  country  in 
search  of  such  a  man,  and  he  cannot 
escape  if  he  would.  Throughout  my  en- 
tire ministerial  career  I  have  been  receiv- 


^  .<> 


1 8  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

ing  almost  every  month,  and  sometimes 
every  week,  letters  from  church  commit- 
tees asking,  "  Do  you  know  a  man  whom 
you  can  recommend  to  us  for  our  pul- 
pit ? "  And  the  churches  which  ask  such 
a  question  are,  as  a  rule,  the  large  and 
influential  churches  at  the  center  of  great 
populations,  where  strength  and  ability 
are  needed  and  where  weaklings  can  avail 
nothing. 

Church  committees,  when  the  time 
comes  to  select  a  minister,  simply  stand 
dumfounded  and  baffled,  unable  some- 
times for  months  to  find  a  man  with  the 
ability  and  training  sufficient  to  make 
him  a  power  in  the  pulpit.  The  great 
universities  and  the  great  railroads  and 
the  great  banks  and  the  great  business 
houses  and  the  great  industrial  enterprises 
find  it  easier  to  secure  capable  men  to 
carry  on  their  work  than  do  our  important 
churches  in  securing  men  equal  to  the 
demands  of  the  modern  pulpit.  The  age 
demands  men  of  power.     And  unless  we 


^ 


The  Dimensions  of  the  Work        r$ 

can  get  men  for  the  pulpit  as  brainy  and 
competent,  as  versatile  and  resourceful,  as 
virile  and  effective,  as  the  great  captains 
of  industry  and  the  merchant  princes,  the 
church  will  be  handicapped  in  her  labor 
and  the  ungodly  will  have  fresh  occasion 
to  blaspheme. 

There  are  more  great  openings  in  the 
Christian  church  for  men  of  genuine 
ability  than  in  any  other  department  of 
our  modern  world.  But  only  strong  men 
are  equal  to  the  problem.  The  work 
of  the  preacher  is  to-day  more  diffi- 
cult far  than  it  was  in  the  days  of  our 
fathers,  and  it  is  growing  more  arduous 
and  taxing  all  the  time.  It  will  be  more 
difficult  in  twenty  years  from  now  than  it 
is  to-day.  The  world  is  growing  increas- 
ingly luxurious.  Wealth  is  piling  itself  up 
in  glittering  heaps.  The  world  has  never 
been  so  comfortable  and  cozy  as  it  is 
now,  and  it  will  be  still  more  comfortable 
a  quarter  of  a  century  farther  on.  With 
life  on  earth  increasingly  delightful,  it  will 


20  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

be  increasingly  difficult  to  lift  men's  eyes 
to  the  glory  of  the  things  which  are  invis- 
ible and  eternal.  John  Bunyan's  man  with 
the  muck-rake  would  not  look  up  because 
he  was  engaged  in  raking  together  sticks 
and  straws,  but  the  man  to  whom  we 
preach  is  raking  gold  and  precious  stones  ; 
and  who  is  strong  enough  to  lift  his  eyes 
to  the  celestial  crown  ?  Life  is  increas- 
ingly crowded.  There  never  have  been  so 
many  papers  and  books,  and  songs  and 
concerts,  and  entertainments  and  lectures 
and  plays,  and  clubs  and  societies  and 
social  duties  as  now.  Never  have  there 
been  so  many  things  to  play  at  or  to  work 
with ;  never  so  many  ways  to  make 
money  and  to  lose  money ;  never  so  many 
teachers  who  are  ready  to  entertain,  in- 
struct, or  inspire. 

The  minister  is  in  a  crowd,  and  he 
must  make  room  for  himself  or  he  is 
lost.  The  cities  are  growing  all  the 
time,  their  populations  becoming  more 
heterogeneous,  their  problems  more  com^ 


The  Dimensiojts  of  the  Work        21 

plicated,  their  interests  more  multifarious, 
their  burdens  heavier,  their  needs  more 
urgent,  and  their  perils  more  alarming. 
The  art  of  living  together  is  a  great  and 
fine  art,  and  to  teach  men  how  to  do  this 
requires  a  saint  and  a  sage.  The  evils 
of  our  day  are  all  monsters,  and  only  a 
Hercules  in  whose  heart  is  the  spirit  of 
Christ  can  face  them  and  vanquish  them. 
The  level  of  culture  is  rising  year  by  year. 
Streams  of  young  people  pour  out  of  our 
universities,  academies,  and  schools,  and 
the  graduates  of  these  schools  have  a  taste 
which  must  not  be  offended,  and  powers 
of  thinking  which  must  not  be  ignored. 
Bunglers  in  language  and  blunderbusses 
in  the  art  of  thinking  cannot  expect  to 
catch  and  hold  the  attention  of  the  rising 
generation.  The  man  who  is  to  preach 
the  unsearchable  riches  of  Christ  to  culti- 
vated congregations  must  be  a  man  of 
native  force  and  superb  equipment. 

5.   What  an  opportunity  is  thus  afforded 
to    the   theological    seminary  for  making 


22  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

itself  a  factor  in  the  civilization  of  our 
century  !  Its  supreme  work  is  the  training 
of  preachers.  It  is  first  of  all  a  school  of 
the  prophets.  Whatever  else  it  may  do  it 
must  do  this,  or  it  fails  to  do  the  one  thing 
essential.  That  it  should  be  even  sus- 
pected of  being  negUgent  in  pursuing  its 
supreme  work  is  little  less  than  a  calamity. 
The  seminaries  have  for  two  decades  been 
the  target  for  unlimited  criticism.  Some- 
times the  criticism  has  been  discriminating, 
and  at  other  times  it  has  degenerated  into 
almost  brutal  abuse.  The  arraignment  has 
been  varied  in  the  mouth  of  different  ac- 
cusers. Sometimes  it  has  been  the  profess- 
ors who  have  been  cudgeled,  sometimes 
it  has  been  the  curriculum  which  has  been 
denounced,  sometimes  scornful  things 
have  been  said  of  the  caliber  of  the  men 
who  have  presented  themselves  as  stu- 
dents. But  whatever  the  form  of  the 
criticism,  the  root  of  it  runs  down  into  the 
fact  that  our  seminaries  for  some  reason  or 
other  do  not  seem  to  be  able  to  supply 


The  Dimensions  of  the   Work        23 

the  churches  with  preachers.  The  gradu- 
ates are  in  many  cases  fine  scholars,  lin- 
guistic experts,  church  specialists,  good 
for  professors'  chairs  and  for  the  work  of 
research,  but  not  effective  in  the  pulpit 
as  preachers  of  the  word. 

It  is  surprising  how  stoutly  and  stub- 
bornly the  churches  insist  upon  preach- 
ers knowing  how  to  preach.  They  will 
forgive  almost  everything  else,  but  they 
will  not  forgive  inability  to  preach.  They 
have  a  wholesome  reverence  for  learning, 
but  they  would  rather  have  a  man  with 
no  diploma  who  can  preach  than  a  man 
with  two  diplomas  who  cannot  preach. 
They  believe  in  experience,  and  acknowl- 
edge its  value ;  but  they  would  rather 
have  a  man  with  no  experience  who 
can  preach  than  a  man  with  years  of 
experience  who  has  lost  the  gift  of  pre- 
senting truth  in  ways  v/hich  lift  and 
strengthen.  In  all  this  the  churches  may 
be  stiff-necked  and  unreasonable,  but  it 
is  a  fram.e  of  mind  which  is  not  likely  to 


24  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

be  changed.  And  if  I  were  the  president 
of  a  theological  seminary,  I  should  listen 
to  what  the  spirit  is  saying  through  the 
churches,  and  should  set  my  house  in  order 
for  the  training  of  preachers.  Every  pro- 
fessor in  the  faculty  should  be  chosen  with 
an  eye  on  the  question.  Will  he  fit  men  to 
preach  ?  and  every  study  in  the  curriculum 
should  be  there  only  on  condition  that  it 
assisted  men  to  preach.  I  should  have 
courses  in  theology,  for  theology  is  the 
queen  of  the  sciences,  and  without  theology 
a  preacher  is  not  equipped  for  his  work. 

But  along  with  theology  I  should  multi- 
ply the  courses  of  study  which  deal  with 
the  problems  of  presenting  thought  in 
such  ways  as  shall  reach  the  reason  and 
the  emotions  and  influence  the  will.  The 
science  of  logic,  and  the  science  of  debate, 
and  the  science  of  rhetoric,  and  the  science 
of  elocution,  should  all  have  high  places, 
higher  than  have  been  given  them  hitherto. 
And  in  addition  to  the  regular  professors  I 
should  want  every  month  some  recognized 


The  Dimensions  of  the   Work        25 

pulpit  leader  to  come  into  personal  touch 
with  my  students,  and  also  some  great 
criminal  lawyer  who  has  proved  indisputa- 
bly by  his  triumphs  that  he  can  by  an 
argument  influence  the  thoughts  and  deci- 
sions of  men. 

There  should  be  no  stronger  argument 
or  mightier  appeal  heard  anywhere  than 
that  which  goes  forth  from  the  Christian 
pulpit.  That  men  should  Sunday  after 
Sunday  stand  in  Christian  pulpits,  igno- 
rant of  the  fundamental  rules  of  thinking, 
and  utterly  incompetent  to  use  the  Eng- 
lish language  with  either  grace  or  power^ 
is  a  scandal  of  such  huge  dimensions  that 
every  seminary  in  the  land  ought  to  con- 
secrate itself  afresh  to  the  great  task  of 
putting  an  end  to  the  scandal,  and  train- 
ing up  a  race  of  preachers  who  shall  be 
able  to  clothe  in  fitting  form  the  heavenly 
message  intrusted  to  their  lips. 

6.  Here  then,  brethren,  is  a  wide  door 
and  effectual,  and  I  appeal  to  you  to  go  in. 
Whatever  else  you  want  to  be,  take  a  vow 


26  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

that  you  will  first  of  all  be  preachers.  It 
is  a  tragic  thing  to  be  a  feeble  and  ineffec- 
tive preacher.  To  speak  for  half  an  hour 
on  the  Lord's  day  to  a  company  of  intelli- 
gent and  hungry-hearted  people  and  create 
no  atmosphere,  make  no  impression,  lift  no 
soul  nearer  heaven,  this  is  something  of 
which  a  man  ought  to  be  ashamed  and  for 
which  he  ought  to  repent  in  sackcloth  and 
ashes.  You  have  no  right  to  disgrace 
yourself  and  degrade  the  pulpit  by  a  ser- 
mon which  does  nothing.  If  you  cannot 
start  at  a  definite  point  and  move  onward 
with  steadfast  foot  toward  a  well-defined 
goal,  and  stop  there  when  you  have  once 
arrived,  you  do  not  have  sufficient  mental 
discipline  to  warrant  you  to  think  that 
God  has  called  you  to  be  a  preacher.  You 
cannot  afford  to  do  a  stupid  and  ineffec- 
tive thing  in  the  pulpit.  You  owe  it  to 
your  brother  ministers  to  do  your  best. 
If  you  preach  poorly,  you  make  it  harder 
for  all  your  brethren  to  gain  a  hearing. 
You   owe  it  to  your  profession  to   con- 


The  Dimensions  of  the   Work        27 

tribute    your     best    in     order    that   your 
profession  may  be   advanced. 

All  of  us  suffer  from  the  boobies  and 
blunderers  who  have  gone  before  us.  It 
has  become  a  proverb  "dull  as  a  sermon," 
*'prosaic  as  a  parson,"  and  there  is  a  preju- 
dice in  the  public  mind  against  preaching 
which  would  have  been  less  intense  and 
more  readily  removed  had  it  not  been  for 
the  sickly  twaddle  and  the  unctions  exhor- 
tation which  has  so  often  been  palmed  off 
under  the  name  of  preaching.  If  you 
by  your  slipshod  preaching  create  a  bias 
against  the  pulpit,  you  not  only  fail  to 
enter  the  kingdom  of  power  yourself,  but 
you  prevent  others  from  going  in.  Your 
failure  involves  not  only  yourself,  but  it 
subtracts  from  the  influence  of  preachers 
everywhere.  For  the  sake  of  your  breth- 
ren in  the  ministry  aim  to  preach  as  well 
as  you  can.  And  for  the  sake  of  the  peo- 
ple to  whom  you  as  a  messenger  are  sent, 
you  ought  to  be  willing  never  to  do  less 
than  your  best. 


28  TJie  Minister  as  Prophet 

Men  and  women  judge  Christianity 
largely  from  sermons.  If  you  make  your 
sermons  dull,  then  religion  becomes  dull 
also.  If  you  present  Christ  in  such  a 
way  that  he  does  not  attract,  then  you 
help  men  to  fix  themselves  in  unbeHef. 
The  worship  of  God  will  become  to  men 
a  tedious  and  irksome  thing,  unless  you 
can  fill  it  with  life  drawn  from  the  foun- 
tains of  your  own  heart.  You  never 
know  what  damage  you  do  by  the  preach- 
ing of  a  weak  and  worthless  sermon. 
And  in  all  your  congregation  there  are 
no  ears  so  sensitive  and  so  critical  as  are 
the  ears  of  a  boy.  You  may  have  a 
church  in  which  there  is  no  millionaire, 
no  professor,  no  author  or  painter  or  ora- 
tor or  scholar,  no  man  or  woman  of  culti- 
vation or  social  prestige,  but  you  will  never 
be  the  pastor  of  a  church  in  which  there 
is  not  a  boy,  and  that  boy  ought  to  be 
your  salvation.  On  entering  your  pulpit, 
say  to  yourself,  "There  is  a  lad  here,"  and 
for  his  sake  if  not  for  your  own  you  must 


The  Dimensions  of  tJie   Work       29 

preach  well.  How  many  thousands  of 
men  are  hopelessly  estranged  from  the 
Christian  church  and  her  services  because 
in  the  days  of  their  boyhood  they  listened 
to  sermons  which  were  shallow  and  cheap, 
only  the  final  Judgment  will  declare.  A 
boy's  impressions  are  deep,  and  when  once 
made  no  subsequent  preacher  is  likely  to 
efface  them. 

Sir  Walter  Scott  was  all  through  his 
life  biased  against  the  Evangelical  branch 
of  the  Christian  church,  because  when 
a  boy  he  had  hstened  to  the  ranting 
of  a  number  of  ignorant  and  bigoted 
evangelists.  Augustine  was  the  son  of 
a  Christian  mother,  but  his  mother  prayed 
for  him  thirty  years  apparently  in  vain. 
Her  son  was  interested  in  philosophy 
and  philosophers,  and  one  of  them,  Faus- 
tus,  had  a  mighty  influence  over  him. 
The  church  had  no  attraction  for  him. 
Her  music  and  her  ceremonies  did  not 
appeal  to  him.  Her  officiating  priests 
were  not  so  interesting  as  the  philosophers. 


30  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

But  by  and  by  Augustine  found  his  way 
to  Milan,  and  in  the  cathedral  there  behold, 
a  man  !  Ambrose.  Like  a  prophet  of  the 
Lord  he  stood  there  in  the  pulpit  expound- 
ing the  scriptures  in  tones  which  fell  on 
human  hearts  like  flakes  of  fire.  Augus- 
tine Hstened,  pondered,  began  to  read  the 
scriptures.  The  old  familiar  words  of 
Jesus  and  the  apostles  began  to  open, 
unsuspected  meanings  came  into  view,  and 
thus  through  the  personaHty  of  a  preacher 
Augustine  found  his  way  to  God.  He 
lived  to  become  one  of  the  giants  of  the 
church  of  Christ,  and  of  all  men  born  of 
women  since  the  days  of  Saul  of  Tarsus, 
not  one  has  surpassed  him  in  the  width  of 
his  influence  or  in  the  enduring  splendor 
of  his  fame.  He  was  saved  to  the  Chris- 
tian church  by  a  man  in  the  pulpit. 

What  future  saint  of  God  may  sit  in 
boys'  clothing  in  your  congregation  you 
cannot  know ;  but  the  fact  that  some- 
where among  your  hearers  there  may  be 
a  boy  who   by  his   faith   may   transform 


The  Dimensions  of  the   Work        5^ 

the  life  of  cities  or  the  policy  of  state, 
should  lead  you  to  make  unceasing  ef> 
forts  to  make  yourself  the  most  effective 
preacher  which  a  man  of  your  native 
gifts  and  acquired  graces  can  in  the 
Providence  of  God  become. 

How  can  you  do  it?  Only  by  having 
faith.  It  is  in  preaching  as  in  every  other 
form  of  Christian  service,  the  secret  of  our 
power  is  faith.  If  a  man  has  faith  as  a 
grain  of  mustard  seed,  he  can  perform 
wonders  both  in  the  pulpit  and  out  of  it. 
No  one  can  preach  well  who  does  not 
believe  in  preaching.  He  must  believe 
that  it  is  a  divine  institution  and  that  it  is 
accompanied  by  supernatural  power.  He 
must  grasp  St.  Paul's  deep-rooted  con- 
viction that  it  has  pleased  God  to  save 
the  world  by  the  foohshness  of  preaching. 

The  voice  for  which  the  preacher  is  to 
listen  always  is  the  Master's  voice,  saying, 
"  Go  preach  the  Gospel,"  and  hearing  this 
the  voices  of  the  world  will  not  disconcert 
nor  make  afraid.     The  world    is   always 


32  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

doing  its  best  to  discourage  preachers. 
The  devil  would  rather  have  a  minister 
do  anything  else  than  preach  a  sermon. 
He  will  persuade  him  if  possible  not  to 
preach  at  all,  and  if  he  fails  in  this  he 
will  coax  him  to  preach  poorly.  There 
is  nothing  that  the  powers  of  darkness 
fear  and  hate  like  the  light  which  bursts 
from  a  genuinely  Christian  sermon.  The 
world  is  filled  with  voices  pleading  with 
men  not  to  preach.  They  say  that  the 
days  for  preaching  are  gone  forever,  that 
the  printing-press  has  come,  that  society 
does  not  need  instruction  or  guidance 
from  the  pulpit,  for  other  teachers  have 
arisen  to  fill  the  preacher's  place.  But 
to  all  such  voices  let  our  answer  be, 
The  printing-press  is  lifeless,  it  is  made 
of  iron  and  steel,  and  nothing  without 
a  throbbing  heart  can  soothe  and  heal 
the  hearts  of  men.  So  long  as  hearts 
are  human,  and  so  long  as  tongues  know 
how  to  speak,  the  hungry  heart  will 
hsten  to  a  tongue  which  has  learned  the 


The  Di^netisions  of  the    Work        33 

story  of  Jesus  and  his  love.  The  day 
of  preaching  has  not  gone ;  it  has  only 
fairly  begun.  The  great  days  of  the 
pulpit  are  in  front  of  us,  and  the  world 
is  groaning  and  travailing  in  pain  together 
until  now,  waiting  for  the  coming  of  new 
sons  of  pulpit  power. 

The  world  keeps  twitting  the  minister 
on  the  loss  of  his  professional  prestige. 
He  is  no  longer  on  a  pedestal.  He  is 
not  now  the  most  conspicuous  personage 
in  all  the  town.  And  to  all  this  the 
answer  is,  What  of  it .?  He  never  be- 
longed upon  a  pedestal.  That  was  not 
his  place.  The  world  gave  and  the  world 
has  taken  away,  and  the  minister  is  where 
he  was  at  the  beginning, —  a  servant  of  the 
Lord.  Jesus  was  not  on  a  pedestal,  and 
it  is  enough  for  the  disciple  to  be  as  his 
Master  and  the  servant  as  his  Lord.  No 
man  looms  up  to-day  in  any  of  the  king- 
doms of  life  as  men  loomed  several  dec- 
ades ago.  There  is  no  statesman  so 
conspicuous  as  Daniel  Webster,  no  editor 


34  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

so  famous  as  Horace  Greeley,  no  mer- 
chant so  much  talked  of  as  A.  T. 
Stewart,  and  nowhere  in  the  world  is 
there  a  teacher  who  has  the  reputation 
once  possessed  by  Gamaliel. 

But  to  be  conspicuous  is  not  so  great  as 
to  be  useful,  and  has  the  time  now  arrived 
when  the  minister  can  be  of  no  service 
to  men  ?  Is  no  one  needed  to  comfort 
women  in  the  agony  over  the  grave  of 
their  first  born,  to  encourage  men  who, 
harassed  by  business  cares,  know  not  how 
to  endure,  to  strengthen  young  men  who 
are  fighting  with  passions  fiercer  than  the 
beasts  of  Ephesus,  and  to  brace  the 
trembling  hearts  of  those  who  are  pass- 
ing into  the  valley  where  the  deep  shad- 
ows lie  ?  What  right  has  a  minister  to 
covet  a  pedestal  ?  Let  him  stand  on  the 
ground  by  the  side  of  his  brethren ! 

Listen  not  to  the  world  and  listen  not 
to  the  despondent  voices  of  your  own 
discouraged  heart.  Often  you  will  be 
tempted  to  accept  the  view  that  men  are 


The  Dimensions  of  the   Work       35 

little  more  than  animals,  and  that  the 
prevailing  forces  in  their  life  are  sordid 
and  materialistic.  There  are  eloquent 
descriptions  of  the  world  representing  it 
as  a  world  in  which  faith  is  dying  and 
aspiration  dead,  inhabited  by  men  who 
have  lost  out  of  their  hearts  the  hopes 
of  nobler  times  and  who  are  asphyxiated 
in  an  atmosphere  filled  with  spiritual 
poison.  The  man  who  doubts  the  dig- 
nity and  divinity  of  human  nature  cannot 
preach.  Banish  every  doubt  concerning 
man  as  you  would  banish  doubt  concern- 
ing God.  Meet  men  always  on  high 
ground.  Speak  to  them  as  though  they 
were  indeed  the  sons  of  God.  Have 
faith  in  God,  and  also  have  faith  in  man. 
Go  out  to  meet  men  on  the  lofty  levels  on 
which  Jesus  walked  in  the  upper  cham- 
ber and  in  the  sermon  on  the  mount,  and 
you  will  never  lack  an  audience,  and 
never  speak  in  vain. 

Pay  no  attention  to  your  heart  when  it 
mourns  over  the  fact  that  there  are  no 


36  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

results.  Appearances  are  usually  de- 
ceiving, and  never  so  deceiving  as  in  the 
field  in  which  the  preacher  does  his 
work.  Little  is  said  about  sermons  to 
the  preacher.  Few  of  his  parishioners 
ever  take  the  trouble  to  thank  him  for 
any  of  his  sermonic  work.  They  come, 
listen,  and  go  home,  silent  on  the  sermon 
and  on  what  it  has  accomplished  for  their 
soul.  Moreover,  the  results  cannot  easily 
be  seen.  The  preacher  strains  his  eyes  to 
find  them,  but  they  are  invisible.  Men 
seem  to  remain  just  what  they  were  in 
spite  of  all  his  labor.  But  a  minister 
should  walk  by  faith  and  not  by  sight.  If 
men  do  not  praise  him  for  his  sermons,  let 
him  seek  the  honor  which  comes  from 
God  only.  If  he  cannot  see  the  results 
of  his  work,  let  him  remember  that  spir- 
itual harvests  are  slow  in  coming,  and 
that  his  will  grow  golden  in  some  far-off 
autumn  sun. 

Lyman  Beecher,  preaching  on  the  sov- 
ereignty   of    God,    did    not    know    that 


The  Dimensions  of  the    Work        37 

young  Wendell  Phillips  was  in  his  con- 
gregation ;  nor  did  he  know  that  after 
the  benediction  Wendell  Phillips  hurried 
to  his  room,  threw  himself  on  his  knees, 
and  dedicated  himself  for  life  to  the  ser- 
vice of  the  King.  Newman  Hall  did  not 
know  that  during  one  of  his  sermons  a 
poor,  obscure  seamstress  was  converted 
by  his  words.  It  was  at  the  end  of  twenty 
years  that  she  sent  him  a  bouquet  as  a 
token  of  gratitude  for  the  peace  of  God 
which  had  come  to  her  through  him.  The 
humble  preacher  in  Ecclefechan  never 
dreamed  that  little  Tommy  Carlyle  would 
some  day  be  one  of  England's  foremost 
men  of  letters,  and  would  say,  referring  to 
the  early  sermons,  "  The  mark  of  that 
man  is  on  me ! "  No  man  ever  knows 
what  he  is  accomplishing  when  he  works 
with  ideas  and  human  souls.  It  is  enough 
to  know  that  he  who  works  with  truth  and 
life  never  works  without  results,  and  that 
he  who  works  with  God  works  with  one 
who  has   said,    "■  My  word   shall  not    re- 


38  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

turn  unto  me  void,  but  it  shall  accomplish 
that  which  I  please,  and  it  shall  prosper 
in  the  thing  whereto  I  sent  it." 

Be  of  good  cheer,  therefore,  and  re- 
member you  stand  in  the  line  of  a  great 
succession.  Think  often  of  the  giants 
who  have  preceded  you  in  this  work. 
Read  what  they  did,  and  revel  in  their 
triumphs.  Surrounded  by  so  great  a 
cloud  of  witnesses  who  have  received 
their  crowns,  you  will  offer  a  more  stead- 
fast testimony  and  abound  in  the  work  of 
the  Lord  till  the  end  of  the  day.  It  is 
well  to  remember  also  the  saying  of  a 
Puritan  preacher,  Thomas  Goodwin,  "  God 
had   only  one  son,  and  he   made   him   a 


II 

The  Three  Men  Involved 

■^  It  takes  three  men  to  preach  a  sermoiij 
—  the  physical  man,  the  mental  man,  and 
the  spiritual  man.  Let  us  give  these 
three  men  our  attention. 

I.  The  Physical  Man.  We  are  just 
beginning  to  understand  the  body.  It  is 
dawning  upon  us  that  it  is  really  a  part 
of  man,  not  an  adjunct  or  an  after- 
thought, but  an  integral  part  of  his 
being.  The  mediaeval  conception  of  the 
flesh  has  dominated  the  world  almost 
to  the  present  generation.  In  theory  we 
threw  that  conception  away  long  ago,  but 
much  of  our  thinking  and  more  of  our 
practice  have  been  unconsciously  colored 
and  molded  by  it.  Many  a  man  even 
in  our  day  has  acted  in  student  days  and 
39 


40  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

afterward  as  though  he  were  a  spirit  only, 
and  had  no  body  to  which  any  thought 
was  due.  But  we  are  coming  to  see  that 
the  body  is  no  less  divine  than  the  soul, 
and  that  without  a  body  man  is  not  man, 
either  in  this  world  or  in  any  other.  He 
is  not  body  alone,  neither  is  he  soul  only, 
but  he  is  soul  and  body ;  the  two  together 
make  the  man.  Without  the  body  the 
soul  can  do  nothing  on  this  earth,  and 
therefore  the  study  of  the  body  and  the 
care  for  its  development  are  as  indispensa- 
ble in  every  rational  system  of  education 
^  as  is  attention  devoted  to  the  soul.  A 
\  minister  cannot  preach  without  his  body, 
and,  other  things  being  equal,  the  sounder 
his  body,  the  more  effective  will  be  his 
preaching. 

Indeed,  the  body  is  more  implicated  in 
the  work  of  the  preacher  than  in  the  work 
of  many  a  man  who  seems  to  use  his  body 
only.  A  minister  is  subjected  to  a  nervous 
strain  which  is  continuous,  and  which  at 
times    becomes    terrific.     Heavy   weights 


The  Three  Men  Involved  41 

hang  on  all  his  nerve  centers.  As  an  ad- 
ministrator he  is  called  upon  to  do  work 
which  is  taxing  to  a  degree.  It  is  easy  to 
work  with  sticks  and  stones,  for  they  are 
without  life  and  will  stay  where  they  are 
put.  It  is  easy  to  work  with  shrubs  and 
flowers,  for  having  no  emotions  of  their 
own  they  do  not  lose  their  temper  or  come 
into  conflict  with  those  who  strive  to  train 
them.  Shrubs  and  flowers,  however,  have 
life,  and  having  life  they  have  habits  and 
inclinations,  and  therefore  the  horticulturist 
has  more  to  think  about  and  watch,  and 
meets  with  greater  disappointments  than 
the  man  who  works  with  matter  which  is 
dead. 

When  one  works  with  animals  a  greater 
degree  of  attention  is  required,  for  in 
animals  there  are  emotions  and  passions, 
and  these  are  constantly  coming  into  col- 
lision with  the  will  of  those  who  would 
manage  them.  It  requires  a  greater  alert- 
ness of  mind  and  a  firmer  patience  to  deal 
with  oxen,  horses,  mules,  than  are  required 


42  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

in  the  successful  management  of  trees  and 
flowers.  But  when  we  come  to  human 
beings,  we  find  life  in  all  its  fullness,  with 
appetites,  passions,  dispositions,  inclina- 
tions, and  a  will  which  must  be  trained  to 
work  in  harmony  with  other  wills.  The 
crudenesses  and  Umitations  and  perversi- 
ties of  human  nature  are  incalculable,  and 
to  keep  several  hundred  men  and  women  ^ 
in  one  household  of  faith  living  and  work- 
ing harmoniously  together  requires  an 
alertness,  a  resourcefulness,  and  a  patience 
which  often  leave  the  heart  fatigued. 

But  this  is  not  more  exhausting  than  is 
the  work  of  the  pastor.  A  minister  has  with 
him  always  the  poor,  the  sick,  the  bereaved, 
the  dying,  the  forlorn,  and  broken.  None 
of  these  is  it  possible  for  him  to  escape. 
He  must  bear  their  burdens  on  his  heart. 
He  must  touch  them,  and  every  time  he 
touches  them  strength  goes  from  him.  To 
be  a  successful  preacher  a  man  must  be 
finely  organized,  but  no  man  can  have  a 
sensitive  organization  without  responding 


The  Three  Men  Involved  43 

to  the  want  and  woe  of  the  people  whose 
lives  are  pressed  close  against  his  own.  A 
half  hour  in  the  sick  chamber  may  be 
more  exhausting  than  ten  hours  of  manual 
labor,  and  one  funeral  may  leave  a  man 
sapped  and  jaded  for  a  day.  Men  who 
think  the  minister  has  an  easy  life  do  not 
know  what  it  is  to  be  a  pastor.  His  work 
as  priest  is  by  no  means  easy.  To  carry  a 
congregation  to  the  throne  of  grace  is  one 
of  the  most  taxing  of  all  labors  to  any  man 
who  realizes  what  public  worship  really  is. 
There  is  not  a  moment  in  the  service 
when  a  true  priest's  heart  is  not  radiating 
life  and  heat,  and  with  some  men  the  out- 
flow of  vitality  through  scripture  reading 
and  extemporaneous  prayer  is  so  tremen- 
dous that  they  are  well-nigh  exhausted  be- 
fore the  time  for  preaching  has  arrived.  To 
conduct  public  worship  as  pubHc  worship 
ought  to  be  conducted  is  a  joy  which  only 
the  redeemed  can  know,  but  it  is  a  joy 
which  must  be  paid  for  with  blood.  In 
his  outside  work  as  patriot  and  citizen  the 


44  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

engagements  are  numerous  and  the  bur- 
dens are  heavy.  The  minister  must  on 
many  occasions  voice  the  sentiments  and 
convictions  of  the  pubHc,  and  whenever  he 
speaks  he  must  speak  in  such  a  way  as  to 
do  justice  to  himself  and  honor  to  those 
whose  spokesman  he  is. 

But  it  is  in  the  work  of  preaching  that 
we  come  to  the  heaviest  tax  and  the 
severest  strain  on  all  the  centers  of 
vitality.  The  preacher  is  a  student,  and 
as  a  student  he  must  work  continuously 
and  intently  through  a  stated  number  of 
hours  each  day.  But  he  is  more  than 
student ;  he  is  writer,  and  must  write 
incessantly  if  he  is  to  maintain  a  clear 
and  forceful  style.  In  addition  to  all  this 
he  is  a  speaker,  and  must  have  such  life 
and  grip  that  he  can  grasp  a  congrega- 
tion and  hold  it  to  the  end.  In  successful 
public  speaking  the  mind  becomes  abnor- 
mally awake,  every  nerve  is  stretched  to 
its  utmost,  and  an  added  strain  is  laid 
upon   the   heart.     Only  a   man  strong  in 


The   Three  Men  Involved  45 

body  can  bear  a  load  so  heavy  through  a 
term  of  years.  First  the  stomach  suc- 
cumbs, then  the  nerves  fail,  then  the  voice 
grows  flabby,  the  sword  with  which  the 
preacher  must  do  his  work  thus  losing  its 
edge,  and  his  power  over  a  congregation 
being  hopelessly  broken.  This  is  the  ex- 
perience of  hundreds,  and  other  hundreds 
escape  physical  wreck  only  by  lessening 
the  tension  and  doing  their  work  in  half- 
hearted ways. 

Let  me  beseech  you,  therefore,  to  take 
care  of  your  body.  It  is  difficult  for  any 
man  under  forty  to  do  this ;  after  forty 
we  begin  to  be  sorry  for  the  sins  of  neg- 
lect in  our  youth.  The  laws  of  health 
are  simple,  and  may  be  easily  stated,  how- 
ever difficult  it  may  be  to  obey  them. 

First  of  all  you  must  have  an  abun- 
dance of  fresh  air.  Men  are  like  plants 
and  cannot  live  without  air.  You  should 
study  in  a  .room  well  ventilated,  the  win- 
dows being  open  as  much  as  possible,  and 
the  lungs  being  filled  now  and  then  with 


4-6  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

brief  seasons  devoted  to  deep  breathing. 
Many  a  man  thinks  himself  stupid  or  the 
book  difficult  to  read  because  he  is  being 
slowly  poisoned  by  carbonic  acid  gas. 
And  what  is  good  by  day  is  good  also  by 
night.  A  current  of  fresh  air  ought  to 
flow  through  your  bedroom.  You  can- 
not breathe  poison  all  night  and  have  a 
mind  fresh  for  work  in  the  morning. 
Never  cease  to  value  the  virtue  of  the 
air  of  God's  great  out  of  doors.  People 
catch  cold  not  because  they  have  too 
much  fresh  air,  but  because  they  have  too 
little. 

Good  health  is  largely  a  problem  of 
eating.  Food  is  fuel,  and  the  body  like 
all  engines  must  have  fuel.  You  are  to 
run  your  engine  at  high  pressure  and 
through  long  distances,  and  therefore  you 
must  have  an  abundance  of  fuel.  Eat 
abundantly.  Eat  all  you  need.  Let  no 
rules  of  the  books  keep  you  from  eating 
as  much  as  the  body  demands.  I  have 
known    more    than    one    student    to    be 


The  Three  Men  Involved  47 

broken  down  because  he  did  not  eat 
enough.  But  do  not  eat  too  much. 
Most  people  do.  Many  ministers  do. 
Over-eating  is  the  prolific  cause  of  in- 
numerable diseases,  and  we  are  undoubt- 
edly the  most  overfed  nation  on  earth. 
To  eat  more  than  the  system  demands  is 
to  break  down  the  machinery  of  the  body, 
and  store  up  trouble  for  years  to  come. 
Eat  little  in  the  morning,  for  you  cannot 
fill  the  stomach  with  a  huge  breakfast 
and  then  have  enough  blood  in  your 
brain  to  do  successful  mental  work.  The 
students  of  all  lands  have  learned  by  ex- 
perience that  to  study  in  the  morning  the 
breakfast  must  be  light.  And  this  is  true, 
even  on  Sunday  morning,  notwithstand- 
ing the  hard  work  of  the  service.  The 
meal  on  Saturday  night  should  be  so 
abundant  that  a  light  breakfast  Sunday 
morning  shall  be  sufficient  for  one's  needs. 
Public  speaking  requires  all  the  blood 
which  the  heart  can  supply,  and  if  one 
has  it  in  his  stomach  digesting  his  break- 


48  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

fast,  it  will  not  burn  in  his  voice  or  throb 
in  his  words. 

Take  an  abundance  of  exercise,  but  do 
not  take  too  much.  Hard  brain  workers 
require  only  exercise  that  is  gentle.  If 
you  are  pouring  out  your  vitality  in  men- 
tal activity,  you  must  not  pour  it  out  also 
in  bodily  exertion.  There  is  such  a  thing 
as  burning  the  candle  at  both  ends,  and 
many  a  man  working  hard  with  his  head 
has  supposed  he  must  recuperate  by  work- 
ing hard  with  his  body,  the  result  being 
complete  bodily  and  mental  exhaustion. 
Let  your  exercise  be  gentle  and  regular 
and  as  often  as  possible  in  the  open  air. 

Along  with  the  air  and  the  food  and 
the  exercise  you  must  take  an  abundance 
of  rest.  If  you  are  to  be  hard  workers, 
you  must  learn  the  art  of  recuperation. 
Since  you  are  always  breaking  yourself 
down,  you  must  learn  how  constantly  to 
build  yourself  up.  God  has  provided  a 
daily  rest  in  sleep.  Take  all  the  sleep 
you  need.    No  book  can  tell  you  how  much 


The  Three  Men  Involved  49 

this  is.  It  may  be  four  hours,  or  six,  or 
eight,  but  whatever  the  amount  is  you 
must  take  it,  and  he  who  does  not  take  it, 
refuses  at  his  peril.  There  are  some  sins 
which  the  nervous  system  refuses  to  par- 
don, and  one  of  these  is  throwing  away 
sleep.  God  has  provided  a  weekly  rest 
in  the  Sabbath.  One  day  in  seven  is  to 
be  devoted  to  rest.  It  matters  not  what 
the  day  is,  but  it  must  be  one  day  in 
seven.  The  Jews  begin  counting  at  one 
point,  the  Christians  begin  at  another, 
the  preacher  must  begin  at  still  another, 
for  oiT  the  day  when  his  congregation  is 
resting  he  must  do  some  of  his  most 
strenuous  work. 

There  is  no  commandment  in  the 
decalogue  so  easily  forgotten  as  the 
fourth.  Moses  knew  this  and  so  began 
it  with  the  solemn,  "  Remember."  It  is 
a  commandment  more  disregarded  by 
ministers  than  by  any  other  class  of 
believers.  Many  a  minister  does  not 
know  that  the  commandment  is  for  him 


50  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

at  all.  He  knows  it  is  for  others,  but 
imagines  that  if  he  is  doing  good,  God 
will  forgive  him  for  doing  wrong.  That 
is  a  big,  black  lie  !  Many  a  dear  saint 
has  been  broken  all  to  pieces  by  such 
foolish  reasoning  and  reckless  conduct. 
God  is  no  respecter  of  persons,  and  every 
one  upon  whom  his  law  falls  is  ground  to 
powder. 

The  same  sort  of  temptation  came 
to  Jesus.  The  devil  told  him  he  could 
jump  from  one  of  the  pinnacles  of  the 
temple  down  into  the  street,  and  that  no 
harm  would  come  to  him  because  there 
was  a  verse  of  scripture  saying :  "  He 
shall  give  his  angels  charge  concerning 
thee :  and  in  their  hands  they  shall  bear 
thee  up  lest  at  any  time  thou  dash  thy 
foot  against  a  stone."  But  the  Son  of 
Man  could  not  be  hoodwinked.  Quick 
as  a  flash  his  reply  was,  ''  Thou  shalt 
not  tempt  the  Lord  thy  God."  That  is 
what  ministers  are  doing  when  they  do 
not    rest    one   day    in    seven ;    they    are 


The   Three  Men  Involved  51 

tempting  God.  They  jump  from  the 
pinnacle  to  the  street  and  are  bruised 
and  broken.  Many  ministers  do  not 
observe  any  rest  day  at  all,  and  those 
who  do  usually  choose  Monday.  The 
reason  for  their  choice  is  that  they  are 
exhausted  after  the  work  of  Sunday,  and 
being  "  blue "  they  do  not  attempt  to 
work.  In  my  opinion  Saturday,  not  Mon- 
day, ought  to  be  the  preacher's  day  of 
rest.  If  he  has  a  blue  Monday,  it  is  be- 
cause there  is  something  wrong  in  his 
way  of  living. 

No  man  in  fair  bodily  health  ought 
to  be  completely  exhausted  by  preach- 
ing two  sermons  on  Sunday.  The  rea- 
son for  the  exhaustion  is  in  many  cases 
because  the  minister  comes  to  his  ser- 
mon with  only  the  fag  ends  of  his 
strength.  He  has  probably  postponed 
the  writing  of  his  sermon  till  Friday  or 
Saturday.  He  then  4Dlunges  into  it  with 
desperation  and  fury.  He  works  on  it 
all  day  Saturday  and  perhaps  late  Satur- 


52  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

day  night,  and  possibly  into  Sunday 
morning.  After  a  few  hours'  sleep  he 
goes  to  work  again,  toiling  up  to  the 
very  hour  for  his  appearance  in  the  pul- 
pit. He  is  already  an  exhausted  man, 
but  in  the  excitement  of  the  hour  he  for- 
gets it.  He  works  on  his  nerves.  He 
calls  out  all  his  reserves.  The  fountains 
of  life  are  well-nigh  exhausted,  and  he 
draws  out  of  them  their  last  drop.  When 
the  day  is  over  he  wonders  whether  Hfe 
is  worth  living,  and  on  the  morrow  he  is 
blue  because  on  the  verge  of  nervous 
collapse. 

A  blue  Monday  is  a  danger  signal 
which  the  Lord  hangs  out  to  warn  his 
ministers  of  coming  disaster.  A  man 
should  come  to  his  pulpit  fresh,  with 
nerves  full  of  life  and  all  his  blood  leap- 
ing through  his  veins.  He  should  do  but 
little  mental  work  on  Saturday,  spending 
Saturday  afternoon  in  the  open  air.  His 
Saturday  evening  meal  should  be  the  best 
and  most  elaborate  meal  of  all  the  week. 


The  Three  Men  Involved  53 

The  evening  should  be  spent  with  his 
family  or  with  friends,  in  a  room  warm 
with  social  cheer,  in  order  that  he  may 
fall  in  love  again  with  human  beings. 
Saturday  night  bed-time  should  be  the 
earliest  of  the  week,  and  after  a  good 
night's  sleep  he  will  awake,  brood  over 
the  sermon  which  he  has  prepared,  and 
the  truth  will  so  burn  in  him  and  the 
tides  of  life  will  so  rise  and  roll  as  to 
render  him  almost  beside  himself  with 
impatience,  so  eager  will  he  be  to  give 
utterance  to  his  message.  In  these 
hurried  times  when  c6ngregations  are 
likely  to  be  made  up  of  fagged  and  jaded 
men  and  women,  there  is  special  reason 
why  the  man  in  the  pulpit  should  be 
physically  recuperated  and  overflowingly 
vital. 

But  the  weekly  rest  is  not  enough. 
There  must  be  an  annual  rest.  Every 
minister  should  have  a  vacation,  longer 
or  shorter,  every  year.  It  does  not  mat- 
ter in  what  season,  it  is    only  important 


54  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

that  it  should  come.  There  is  much 
routine  in  ministerial  work,  and  routine, 
if  too  long  continued,  is  ruinous  to  the 
action  of  the  highest  powers  of  the 
soul.  There  is  a  monotony  which  unless 
broken  leads  down  to  the  chambers  of 
death.  A  man  cannot  prepare  two  ser- 
mons, and  then  two  more,  and  then  two 
more,  and  then  two  more,  and  keep  on 
doing  that  week  after  week,  month  after 
month,  year  after  year,  without  a  break, 
or  a  chance  to  get  out  of  the  treadmill  and 
lie  down  for  a  while  in  God's  fields.  The 
land  from  which  you  expect  rich  harvests 
must  be  allowed  to  lie  fallow,  and  if  a  min- 
ister does  not  break  the  routine  of  ser- 
monic  work,  the  routine  will  most  certainly 
break  him.  He  will  become  mechanical, 
perfunctory,  professional,  and  will  cease 
to  be  vital  and  human. 

Take  a  vacation  every  year.  If  your 
people  do  not  consent,  take  it  anyhow. 
No  minister  is  called  upon  to  sacrifice  his 
usefulness    because    of    the    demands    of 


The  Three  Men  Involved  55 

ignorant  and  unreasonable  people.  If 
they  remind  you  that  the  devil  never 
takes  a  vacation,  say  to  them  that  that 
is  the  very  reason  you  are  bound  to  take 
one,  since  you  are  not  following  the  devil, 
but  the  prince  of  preachers  who  was 
wont  to  say  to  those  who  labored  for  him, 
"  Come  apart  and  rest  awhile." 

2.  The  Mental  Man.  No  matter  how 
fine  the  physique,  something  besides  body 
is  essential  for  the  production  of  sermons. 
There  is  a  mental  man  inside  the  physical 
man  whose  assistance  is  indispensable,  and 
whose  health  and  growth  must  be  care- 
fully safeguarded.  A  minister  must  give 
constant  attention  to  the  making  of  his 
mind.  Its  muscles  must  be  developed ;  its 
nerves  must  be  kept  full  of  blood.  The 
preacher  is  a  teacher,  and  how  can  a 
teacher  teach  unless  he  knows,  and  how 
can  he  know  unless  he  uses  all  his  faculties 
of  acquisition  and  retention  ?  His  memory 
must  be  finely  disciplined.  Without  it  he 
is  pouring  wine  into  a  sieve.     His  imagina- 


56  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

tion  must  be  alive.  He  must  see  in  order 
that  he  may  paint.  The  power  of  organ- 
izing thought  must  be  built  up  and  dis- 
ciplined, for  it  is  his  business  to  weld  the 
links  of  argument  and  appeal  into  a  chain 
which  shall  be  strong  enough  to  bind 
men's  hearts  and  minds  around  the  cross 
of  Christ. 

There  are  two  kinds  of  preachers,  —  men 
of  thoughts  and  men  of  thought.  The 
man  of  thoughts  keeps  all  sorts  of  books 
of  illustrations,  and  drawers  filled  with 
clippings,  and  envelopes  stuffed  with 
bright  ideas,  and  when  the  time  comes  for 
the  making  of  the  sermon,  he  brings  out 
cf  his  treasury  things  new  and  old,  placing 
the  thoughts  in  a  certain  sequence,  like  so 
many  glass  beads  on  a  string,  the  string 
being  divided  into  sections  by  an  occa- 
sional big  blue  bead,  this  bead  being  an 
illustration.  Such  a  man  brings  his  beads 
before  the  congregation,  counts  them  over, 
spends  thirty  minutes  in  doing  it,  and  the 
people  go  home  thinking  they  have  been 


The  Three  Men  Involved  57 

listening  to  a  sermon.  But  in  a  deep  sense 
that  performance  is  not  a  sermon  at  all. 
Reciting  a  string  of  thoughts  is  not,  strictly 
speaking,  preaching. 

Preaching  is  the  unfolding  of  truth : 
it  is  the  evolution  of  an  idea.  One  idea 
is  sufficient  to  make  a  powerful  sermon. 
A  man  who  can  take  a  great  idea  and 
by  sheer  force  of  brain  unfold  it  until 
it  glows  and  hangs  glorious  before  the 
eyes  of  men,  and  so  burns  that  hard 
hearts  melt  and  consciences  awake  and 
begin  to  tremble,  is  a  preacher  indeed, 
and  actually  performs  the  work  of  the 
Lord.  But  the  little  dabbler  in  other 
men's  thoughts,  who  fills  up  his  time  with 
second-hand  anecdotes  and  stale  stories, 
and  tales  intended  to  make  people  cry, 
never  gets  down  to  the  place  where  the 
soul  lives,  and  does  not  know  either  the 
preacher's  agony  or  his  reward.  A  con- 
gregation knows  when  it  is  in  the  hands 
of  a  man  who  is  a  thinker ;  and  it 
also    knows    when    it    is    listening   to    a 


58  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

man    who    is    a  retailer   of   other    men's 
ideas. 

A  sermon  is  a  rose.  The  text  is  the 
bud,  and  the  preacher,  breathing  on  the 
bud,  causes  the  folded  petals  to  open  on 
the  air  and  fill  with  fragrance  the  place 
where  the  saints  of  God  are  sitting.  Go 
to  the  bee,  young  preacher ;  consider  her 
ways  and  be  wise.  Where  does  the  bee 
get  her  honey }  You  say  out  of  the  flowers. 
You  are  mistaken.  There  is  no  honey  in 
the  flowers.  You  cannot  get  an  ounce  of 
honey  out  of  a  hundred  fields  of  flowers. 
Open  a  flower  and  there  is  no  honey  in  it ; 
only  a  little  sweetened  water.  But  the  bee 
takes  the  sweetened  water,  squeezes  into 
it  a  drop  of  her  own  secretion,  makes  to  it 
a  personal  contribution,  and  lo !  the  sweet- 
ened water  becomes  honey.  The  bee  did 
it  by  personal  work.  And  so  must  you. 
All  the  flowers  of  speech  and  the  illustra- 
tions and  the  anecdotes  and  the  stories 
are  so  many  posies  containing  nothing  but 
a  little  sweetened  water.     You  cannot  feed 


The  Three  Men  Involved  59 

an  audience  of  adults  on  water  even  though 
it  is  sweetened.  You  can  feed  men  only 
on  thought,  and  you  must  do  the  thinking. 
To  whatever  you  find  you  must  make  your 
own  individual  and  personal  contribution. 
It  is  only  as  you  put  your  own  heart  and 
brain  into  your  sermons  that  they  become 
sweet  as  honey  and  the  honeycomb. 

Go  to  the  spider,  young  preacher,  and 
get  from  it  a  lesson  in  preaching.  The 
spider  does  not  weave  its  web  out  of  mate- 
rial which  is  gathered  from  the  field  or  the 
house,  but  the  web  is  spun  out  of  the  sub- 
stance of  the  spider  itself.  That  delicate 
and  artistic  creation,  the  spider's  web,  is 
too  fine  to  be  made  of  the  rough  stuff  of 
the  streets.  Those  gossamer  threads  are 
woven  out  of  the  stuff  of  which  the  spider 
is  made,  and  its  miracle  becomes  possible 
only  by  the  forthgiving  of  the  spider's  own 
life.  If  you  would  catch  and  hold  the 
hearts  of  men,  you  must  weave  your  ser- 
mons out  of  the  very  substance  of  your 
soul.     It  is  not  the  material  which  other 


6o  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

men  have  gathered  and  organized,  but  the 
stuff  of  your  own  spiritual  self  which  is 
demanded  by  the  people  who  think.  Your 
personal  contribution  is  everything.  You 
must  pour  into  your  sermon  your  own 
heart's  blood.  Let  me  give  you  a  new 
definition  of  sermons;  they  are  drops  of 
blood  shed  by  the  servants  of  the  Lord  for 
the  redemption  of  the  world.  More  will 
be  said  of  the  mental  man  when  we  come 
to  consider  the  growing  of  sermons. 

3.  The  Spiritual  Man.  Man  is  an  ani- 
mal, but  an  animal  cannot  preach.  He 
is  an  intellectual  being,  but  an  intellectual 
being  cannot  preach.  He  is  a  being  cre- 
ated in  the  image  of  God,  and  endowed 
with  the  divine  spirit.  Without  the  spirit 
of  God,  no  man,  no  matter  what  his  physi- 
cal prowess  or  his  intellectual  ability,  can 
successfully  proclaim  the  good  news  of 
God  in  Christ.  It  is  easy  to  forget  this. 
Many  men  do  forget  it.  They  cannot 
understand  either  themselves  or  others 
because  they  drop  out  the  fact  that  with- 


The  TJwee  Men  Involved  6 1 

out  the  Holy  Spirit  no  man  can  speak  suc- 
cessfully for  God.  A  man  may  say :  "  I 
have  a  diploma.  I  completed  the  course 
of  study.  I  was  one  of  the  best  men  in 
my  class.  But  no  one  wants  to  hear  me 
preach !  Why  is  this  t "  You  have  left 
out  the  one  thing  indispensable,  —  the  Holy 
Spirit.  It  is  not  uncommon  for  unsuccess- 
ful preachers  to  compare  themselves  with 
their  successful  brethren,  and  try  to  ascer- 
tain why  some  succeed  and  others  fail. 
Their  comparisons  are  pathetic  to  the 
verge  of  tragedy.  They  compare  their 
own  ideas,  their  figures,  and  their  language 
with  those  adopted  by  successful  men,  and 
falling  behind  no  whit,  as  they  think,  in 
all  these  points,  they  feel  the  world  has 
much  abused  them,  and  that  if  the  public 
were  not  so  stupid  and  so  blind,  they  would 
all  find  themselves  in  pulpit  thrones. 

O  foolish  men,  do  you  not  know  that  it  is 
not  by  rhetorical  might,  neither  by  scholas- 
tic power,  but  by  the  spirit  of  the  Lord 
that  a  preacher  preaches  ?    It  is  surprising 


62  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

how  little  depends  on  structure  and  orna- 
ment and  how  much  depends  on  the  spirit. 
Peter's  sermon  on  the  day  of  Pentecost 
seems  meager  and  tame  enough,  but  then 
it  was  impossible  for  Luke  to  report  that 
sermon,  for  he  could  not  report  the  spirit 
of  God.  The  sermons  of  Spurgeon  sound 
cold  and  commonplace  as  we  read  them  in 
his  volumes,  and  the  sermons  of  Beecher 
seem  repetitious  and  prolix.  But  it  is  im- 
possible to  print  a  sermon.  The  most 
fully  reported  sermon  is  nothing  but  a 
skeleton.  The  life  of  the  sermon  lies  in 
the  tones  and  accents,  in  the  subtle  fire 
that  burns  in  the  syllables,  and  the  spirit- 
ual heat  which  radiates  from  the  man  him- 
self. A  sermon  is  a  man,  and  you  cannot 
print  a  man. 

It  is  commonplace  to  say  that  a 
preacher  must  have  the  Holy  Spirit,  but 
it  is  a  commonplace  which  every  preacher 
will  do  well  to  ponder.  By  Hol}^  Spirit  is 
meant  not  some  indefinable  and  mysteri- 
ous essence,  but  the  spirit  that  belongs  to 


The  Three  Men  Involved  63 

a  whole-hearted,  fuU-statured  man.  The 
preacher  must  be  sincere.  This  is  car- 
dinal. Without  sincerity  he  is  a  clanging 
cymbal.  He  must  not  put  on.  Pretense 
is  abominable.  A  sham  tone  is  nauseating. 
Every  tone  should  be  natural  and  honest. 
The  man  who  talks  in  one  tone  in  the 
street  and  in  another  tone  in  the  pulpit  is 
a  man  who  needs  to  mend  his  ways.  Nor 
should  he  put  on  robes  of  gorgeous  lan- 
guage, speaking  in  a  style  which  is  not  his 
own.  If  he  has  read  fine  literature  until 
an  elegant  and  superb  style  is  sponta- 
neous and  habitual,  let  him  use  it ;  but  let 
him  not  put  on  a  splendid  diction  which 
does  not  fit  the  form  and  habit  of  his 
mind.  A  rhetorical  drum-major  is  not 
a  man  to  lead  reverent  souls  into  the 
presence  of  the  eternal.  Nor  should  he 
put  on  energy  and  passion  when  his 
thought  calls  for  neither.  Why  make 
thunder  tones  over  an  idea  which  is  puny } 
A  speaker,  to  be  effective,  must  be  sin- 
cere.     He  must  also   be  cheerful.     The 


64  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

Gospel  is  good  news.  The  New  Testa- 
ment opens  with  a  burst  of  music  and 
closes  with  another.  The  Master,  in  the 
shadow  of  the  cross,  said,  "  Be  of  good 
cheer,"  and  to  the  hard-pressed  Christians 
of  the  first  century  St.  James's  exhortation 
was,  *'  Count  it  all  joy,  brethren,  when  ye 
fall  into  divers  trials."  Paul,  even  in  a 
Roman  prison,  could  write,  "  Rejoice, 
again  I  say,  rejoice."  The  New  Testa- 
ment narrates  the  most  tragic  story  known 
to  history,  but  is  at  the  same  time  the 
most  jubilant  book  in  all  the  world.  The 
minister  who  has  a  glum  face  and  a  dole- 
ful spirit  is  a  man  from  whom  the  Holy 
Spirit  has  departed.  He  must  also  be  a 
man  of  hope.  The  golden  age  must  lie 
before  him. 

The  Hebrew  prophets  were  unlike  in 
much,  but  in  seeing  bright  things  com- 
ing they  were  all  agreed.  No  matter 
how  dark  and  dismal  was  the  picture 
which  they  painted  of  the  world  in  which 
they   lived,  they    never    laid    down    their 


y 


The  Three  Men  Involved  65 

brush  till  they  had  tinged  the  horizon 
with  golden  fire.  No  man  has  a  right  to 
call  attention  to  the  terrible  and  tragic  / 
features  of  his  time  unless  he  at  the  same 
time  points  to  the  deepening  splendor  of  a 
great  glory  bursting  in  the  East.  Some- 
time, somewhere,  the  prophets  said,  the 
city  of  the  Lord  shall  be  established,  and 
its  glory  shall  go  forth  into  all  the  earth. 
It  is  significant  that  St.  Paul  calls  hope 
the  helmet  of  the  armor  which  a  Christian 
man  is  bound  to  wear.  Unless  a  man  can 
hold  his  head  up,  he  cannot  work  and  he 
cannot  fight.  Unless  a  preacher  can  hold 
up  his  head,  he  cannot  preach  the  Gospel 
in  tones  which  smite  and  conquer.  Being 
a  man  of  hope,  the  preacher  will  be  a  man 
of  courage.  Where  is  heroism  more  needed 
than  in  the  Christian  ministry  } 

No  man  should  put  his  hand  to  the  plow 
unless  he  is  determined  not  to  look  back, 
no  matter  what  his  hardships  be.  There 
are  obstacles  and  disappointments  all  the 
way.     It  is  hard  to  get  an  education,  but 


66  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

it  is  no  harder  for  theological  students 
than  for  others.  It  is  hard  sometimes  to 
find  a  place  in  which  to  work,  but  so  also 
it  is  hard  for  lawyers  and  doctors  and 
editors  to  get  a  start.  It  is  hard  to  se- 
cure a  salary  at  all  in  keeping  with  one's 
deserts,  but  many  a  young  man  fitting 
himself  for  a  business  career  is  to-day 
down  at  the  bottom,  working  for  four  or 
five  dollars  a  week.  It  is  hard  not  to  be 
appreciated,  and  few  ministers  get  credit 
for  being  as  able  men  as  they  are.  The 
very  frequency  of  their  appearance  before 
the  people  takes  away  the  charm  of  nov- 
elty and  the  possibility  of  originality, 
and  makes  even  industrious  and  able 
men  seem  ordinary  and  commonplace. 
But  preachers  are  not  the  only  unappre- 
ciated men  in  this  world.  It  is  hard  to 
be  ignored,  and  it  is  hard  to  be  gossiped 
about  and  misunderstood,  but  this  has 
been  the  fate  of  every  man  who  has 
helped  make  the  world  a  better  place  in 
which  to  live. 


The   Three  Men  Involved  6y 

It  is  hard  —  yes,  it  is  hard,  and  the 
man  who  wants  something  easy  is  not 
called  to  preach  the  Gospel.  A  coward 
cannot  read  the  scriptures  in  a  tone 
which  will  fire  the  hearts  of  men,  and  a 
preacher  with  a  whine  in  his  soul  is  a 
preacher  whose  usefulness  is  gone.  Men 
who  are  everlastingly  whimpering  because 
of  their  misfortunes  and  trials  can  never 
lift  men  into  the  joy  of  the  Gospel ;  for,  if 
one  is  to  keep  his  people  on  the  sunny 
side  of  the  street,  he  must  walk  on  the 
sunny  side  of  the  street  himself.  When 
Jesus  called  twelve  men  to  preach  his 
Gospel,  he  did  not  promise  them  easy 
times.  He  told  them  they  would  be  like 
so  many  sheep  in  the  midst  of  wolves, 
and  though  obliged  to  face  hatred,  suffer- 
ing, and  death,  they  were  not  to  be  dis- 
concerted or  afraid.  He  dipped  his  brush 
in  "hues  of  midnight  and  eclipse,"  and 
painted  dangers,  sufferings,  and  fire-eyed 
opposition ;  but  his  apostles,  looking  on  it 
^11,  never  winced   or   faltered,  and   went 


68  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

bravely  forward  to  do  the  work  appointed 
for  them  to  do.  To  read  the  tenth  chapter 
of  St.  Matthew's  gospel  gives  one  an  ex- 
alted notion  of  the  kind  of  stuff  out  of 
which  these  twelve  men  were  made.  No 
wonder  they  turned  the  world  upside 
down !  They  were  to  face  the  deadliest 
perils,  and  they  were  also  to  endure.  In 
their  patience  they  were  to  save  their 
souls. 

Patience  is  endurance.  The  success- 
ful minister  has  mastered  the  secret  of 
enduring.  When  William  Pitt  was  asked 
the  quality  most  needed  in  a  man  fit  to 
be  prime  minister  of  England,  his  reply 
was,  "  Patience."  When  asked  what 
quality  stood  second,  his  reply  was,  *'  Pa- 
tience." When  pressed  to  tell  what  req- 
uisite was  next,  his  reply  still  was, 
*'  Patience."  All  ministers  need  patience, 
whether  ministers  of  an  earthly  sovereign 
or  servants  of  the  Heavenly  King.  One 
cannot  work  successfully  wdth  men  in 
enterprises  that  are  critical  and  vast  unless 


The  Three  Men  Inzwlved  69 

he  has  the  grace  of  holding  on.  No  delay 
should  daunt  him  and  no  disappointment 
should  break  him  down.  After  every 
defeat  he  should  rise  again,  and  from 
every  slough  he  should  emerge  with  a 
face  radiant  with  the  expectation  of  vic- 
tory. J 

One  of  the  besetting  sins  of  our  age  is 
impatience.  We  move  more  rapidly  than 
any  generation  before  us,  and  our  ambition 
is  to  move  faster  still.  In  the  world  of  me- 
chanics and  machinery,  we  can  do  every- 
thing more  expeditiously  than  our  fathers 
could.  We  can  travel  faster  by  rail  and 
sail  faster  on  the  sea.  We  can  make 
money  faster,  and  also  lose  it  faster,  than 
any  of  our  predecessors.  We  can  manu- 
facture goods  faster  and  put  up  buildings 
with  a  rapidity  worthy  of  the  magicians  of 
the  olden  tales;  and,  because  we  can  do 
many  things  so  swiftly,  we  are  impatient 
that  we  cannot  with  equal  dash  do  every- 
thing that  we  want  to  do.  But  alas  !  the 
processes  of  growth  cannot  be  hastened, 


;7o  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

and  when  it  comes  to  growing  crops  in 
the  field  or  raising  harvests  in  the  mind, 
we  are  bound  by  the  same  old  tedious 
laws  by  which  the  world  was  bound  a 
thousand  years  ago.  Wheat  grows  no 
more  rapidly  now  than  in  the  days  of 
Herodotus,  and  the  Indian  corn  requires 
no  fewer  days  to  ripen  than  it  did  when 
the  Indians  and  our  fathers  lived  side  by 
side  on  this  New  England  soil.  Boys 
need  the  appointed  years  to  grow  to  man- 
hood and  girls  to  grow  to  womanhood,  and 
a  soul  can  be  converted  or  sanctified  no 
more  swiftly  now  than  in  the  days  when 
Christianity  was  young.  No  man  becomes 
a  saint  in  a  day  or  a  night,  and  sermons, 
however  true  and  God-inspired,  bring 
forth  harvests  only  at  the  end  of  many 
days. 

It  is  important,  therefore,  that  the  young 
minister  should  have  patience,  that  he 
should  school  himself  to  it,  and  should 
pray  unceasingly  that  more  and  more  he 
may  become   willing    to    wait    upon    the 


The  Three  Men  Involved  71 

Lord.  If  he  allows  himself  to  become 
feverish  and  fussy,  this  ungodly  disposi- 
tion will  show  itself  in  all  his  pulpit  work. 
The  servant  of  the  Lord  should  have  a 
calm  eye  and  an  untroubled  heart  if  he 
is  to  do  successfully  the  great  work  of 
the  King.  It  is  the  man  with  high  ideals 
and  strenuous  spirit  who  is  most  likely 
to  become  soonest  disgusted  with  the 
sluggishness  of  the  average  parish;  and 
unless  he  holds  himself  in  check,  he  will 
not  only  infuse  into  his  sermons  a  heated 
and  a  captious  spirit,  but  he  will  write 
out  his  resignation  before  his  work  is  well 
begun. 

One  of  the  curses  of  the  modern  church 
is  the  shortness  of  the  average  pastorate. 
Our  ministers  are  degenerating  into  a 
band  of  nomads,  and  they  wander  from 
place  to  place  in  search  of  pastures  which 
are  green.  Not  only  do  the  preachers 
lose,  but  the  whole  church  of  God  suffers. 
A  man  cannot  test  himself  and  show  what 
is  really  in  him  unless  he  has  been  in  a 


72  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

church  for  several  years,  and  the  best  and 
most  lasting  work  is  never  done  until  suffi- 
cient time  has  elapsed  for  the  people  to 
know  the  pastor  and  the  pastor  to  know 
the  people.  It  requires  years  for  the 
heart-doors  to  be  opened,  and  it  is  only 
after  they  are  open  that  the  word  of  God 
runs  and  is  glorifiedo 

I  wish  that  every  young  man  might 
make  up  his  mind  to  stay  with  his  first 
church  at  least  five  years  unless  circum- 
stances extraordinary  render  so  long  a 
stay  impracticable,  and  that  after  the 
first  term  of  service  no  pastorate  of  less 
than  ten  years'  duration  might  be  counted 
worthy  of  a  minister  or  a  church.  It  is 
as  the  years  increase  that  a  minister's 
influence  spreads  and  deef)ens  in  ways 
which  are  amazing.  Only  after  the  pa- 
tient laying  of  deep  foundations  is  it 
possible  for  the  man  of  God  to  know  what 
sort  of  structure  it  is  possible  for  him  to 
build.  The  man  who  flits  from  place  to 
place  is  almost  sure  to  give  but  surface 


The  Three  Men  Involved  73 

truths,  and  whatever  impression  he  may 
make  is  quickly  washed  away;  whereas, 
the  man  who  stays  in  one  field  year  after 
year  draws  from  a  well  that  is  deep  and 
that  grows  constantly  deeper,  and  it  is 
from  the  deep  wells  of  the  minister's  heart 
that  the  best  and  most  refreshing  sermons 
flow.  One  of  the  greatest  pulpit  princes 
of  recent  times  is  Alexander  Maclaren  of 
Manchester.  At  the  celebration  of  the 
thirty-eighth  anniversary  of  his  pastorate, 
he  uttered  these  significant  words,  ''  I  am 
quite  sure  that  a  man's  influence  increases 
in  geometric  ratio  with  the  length  of  his 
pastorate."  He  would  never  have  found 
that  out  had  he  not  been  a  man  of  pa- 
tience. 

These  then  are  the  three  men  by  whose 
combined  effort  you  are  to  preach.  The 
physical  man  must  be  strong:  the  mental 
man  must  be  alert :  the  spiritual  man  must 
be  true.  It  is  the  man  rather  than  the 
sermon  which  makes  the  impression,  and 
no   matter    what    you   say,   you   may   be 


74  T^h^  Minister  as  Prophet 

impotent  in  your  work  if  the  man  behind 
the  sermon  is  thin  or  vain  or  insincere. 
There  is  warning  in  the  words  of  Emerson, 
"  What  you  are  speaks  so  loud  I  cannot 
hear  what  you  say.'* 


Ill 

The  Growing  of  Sermons 

The  usual  expression  is  "making'*  a 
sermon,  or  "  getting  up  "  a  sermon,  but  the 
"  growing "  of  a  sermon  is  preferable. 
For  in  a  very  true  sense  you  can  no  more 
"  make  "  a  sermon  than  you  can  "make"  an 
ear  of  corn,  and  you  can  no  more  "  get  up  " 
a  sermon  than  you  can  '*  get  up  "  a  lily  of 
the  valley.  A  sermon  in  the  highest  sense 
is  a  growth  rather  than  a  manufactured 
product,  an  organism  and  not  a  thing  that 
is  made.  You  may  make  something  and 
call  it  a  sermon— a  verbal  thing  thirty 
minutes  long,  but  a  verbal  creation  is  not 
necessarily  a  sermon  even  though  you  give 
it  that  name.  » 

A   pulpit   discourse    may  be   manufac- 
tured  just   as   a  piece   of   furniture.      A 
man   who    makes   a   table    picks   out  his 
75 


76  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

pieces  of  wood,  saws  them,  planes  them, 
puts  them  together,  and  the  article  thus 
constructed  is  sandpapered,  painted,  and 
varnished.  In  the  same  mechanical  man- 
ner it  is  possible  to  work  in  the  study.  A 
minister  may  bring  out  his  materials,  put 
in  a  piece  of  exegesis,  add  a  piece  of 
doctrine,  tack  on  a  piece  of  illustration, 
and  then  a  piece  of  exhortation,  and  these 
having  been  nicely  fitted  together,  he  may 
sandpaper  them  and  varnish  them,  and 
the  whole  thing  polished  and  labeled  may 
be  carried  before  a  congregation  and 
called  a  sermon,  but  a  sermon  in  reality 
it  is  not.  It  is  too  wooden.  It  is  dead, 
and  a  sermon  is  always  alive.  A  sermon 
grows  as  an  apple  grows,  and  what  it  needs 
is  sun  and  time.  You  may  pick  it  green  if 
you  are  in  a  hurry,  and  if  you  do,  it  will  set 
your  people's  teeth  on  edge.  You  may 
pick  it  half  ripe  and  lose  something  of  the 
flavor,  or  you  may  wait  till  it  becomes 
mellow,  rich,  and  juicy,  and  then  the  saints 
are  glad. 


The  Growing  of  Sermons  yj 

A  genuine  sermon  is  an  organism,  a 
living  thing  with  all  its  parts  organically 
connected,  and  when  you  throw  it  out 
upon  a  congregation,  it  becomes  a  living 
creature  with  hands  and  feet,  and  immedi- 
ately goes  to  work  and  takes  hold  of  men, 
lifting  them  out  of  despondencies  and 
dungeons  and  setting  them  to  travel  along 
ways  that  are  new.  It  will  be  well  for  us 
to  consider  the  conditions  under  which 
sermons  best  grow. 

If  a  man  is  to  produce  good  sermons 
straight  onward  through  the  years,  he  must 
be  the  most  indefatigable  of  all  toilers. 
The  cardinal  virtue  of  a  prophet  of  God 
is  industry.  Many  men  do  not  know  what 
work  is.  Some  of  them  think  they  know, 
but  they  are  mistaken.  Many  a  man 
imagines  he  is  working  hard  when  in  fact 
he  is  a  dawdler  and  a  shirk.  Some  men 
seem  busier  than  they  are,  and  not  a  few 
would  rather  do  anything  else  than  think. 

Men  are  naturally  intellectually  lazy. 
This  is  true  of  all  men  and  not  at  all  pecul- 


78  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

iar  to  the  clergy.  The  average  human 
being  wherever  he  is  found  shrinks  from 
any  task  which  requires  close  and  continu- 
ous attention,  and  which  lays  a  tax  upon  the 
mind.  It  is  not  because  ministers  are 
lazier  than  other  men  that  I  dwell  upon 
their  indolence,  but  because  laziness  is 
more  disastrous  in  their  case  than  in  any 
other.  Their  sin  finds  them  out  and  their 
shame  is  shouted  from  the  housetops. 
The  work  of  growing  sermons  requires  a 
more  strenuous  forthputting  of  more  dif- 
ferent faculties  of  the  mind  than  is  nec- 
essary in  any  other  calling,  and  if  one  is  not 
capable  of  sustained  intellectual  effort  and 
not  willing  to  exert  his  mind  in  season  and 
out  of  season,  let  him  never  think  himself 
called  by  God  to  preach. 

If  the  clergyman  has  in  his  system  any 
germs  of  mental  sloth,  let  him  watch  and 
pray,  for  no  other  man  in  all  the  town 
has  better  opportunities  to  take  life  easy. 
Most  men  go  to  work  under  bosses  who 
hold  their  watch  in  their  hand.    The  work- 


The  Growing  of  Sermons  79 

man  who  does  not  appear  promptly  on 
time  is  reprimanded  and  docked.  The 
minister  works  under  one  who  also  holds 
a  watch  in  his  hand,  but  both  watch  and 
overseer  are  invisible,  and  therefore  are 
readily  forgotten.  A  man  who  will  take 
advantage  of  his  people  simply  because 
the  door  is  shut  and  he  cannot  be  seen 
is  a  deep-dyed  scamp,  even  if  he  has  been 
ordained  and  writes  Reverend  in  front  of 
his  name.  But  a  minister  can  be  intel- 
lectually lazy  and  still  be  so  busied  with 
parochial  affairs  as  to  feel  he  is  earning 
his  salary,  and  not  realize  how  lazy  he  is. 
The  head  of  a  church  can  do  chores 
and  run  errands,  and  talk  with  good  peo- 
ple in  the  streets  and  in  their  homes, 
and  spend  a  deal  of  time  inspecting  the 
wheels  and  mending  the  belts  of  the  ec- 
clesiastical machinery,  but  all  this  requires 
little  mental  effort,  and  that  is  why  many 
men  prefer  to  do  it.  If  a  man  is  to  be  a 
preacher,  he  cannot  fill  up  his  days  with 
the  odds  and  ends  of  church  administra- 


8o  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

tion,  but  must  set  himself  down  to  do 
some  honest  and  straightforward  think- 
ing. 

Some  men  are  tempted  to  be  lazy  be- 
cause intellectually  their  people  are  so 
common.  Their  congregation  reads  little 
and  thinks  less,  and  the  minister,  know- 
ing this,  has  no  incentive  to  put  thought 
into  his  sermons,  and  feels  that  any  expo- 
sition, however  faulty,  or  any  exhortation, 
however  feeble,  will  be  as  acceptable  as 
the  most  carefully  wrought-out  produc- 
tion. But  no  matter  what  his  tempta- 
tions, a  prophet  of  the  Lord  cannot  be 
lazy  without  forfeiting  his  power.  Unless 
you  work  as  hard  as  Italians  do  when 
they  are  digging  ditches,  and  as  hod- 
carriers  do  when  they  are  carrying  mortar, 
and  as  farmers  do  when  they  are  in  the 
harvest  field,  and  as  doctors  do  in  attend- 
ing to  their  patients,  and  as  merchants  do 
in  bearing  the  heavy  burdens  of  financial 
responsibility,  and  as  mothers  do  in  the 
ordering  of   their  households  and  in  the 


The  Growing  of  Sermons  8i 

rearing  of  their  children,  you  have  no 
right  to  stand  in  the  pulpit  on  the  Lord's 
day  and  as  a  representative  of  Christ  tell 
his  people  how  they  ought  to  live.  Learn 
to  live  iirst  yourself. 

I.    Work  by  the  watch,  not  necessarily 
with  the  watch  ever  open  before  you,  but 
with  a  sense  of  time  deeply  grounded  in 
your   mind.     Thousands   of   your   fellow- 
countrymen  are  out  of  bed  every  morning 
at  four   o'clock.     They  must  be  in  order 
that  they  may  live.     Tens   of   thousands 
are  out  of  bed  at  five,  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands are  up  at  six,  and  millions   are  at 
their  work  in  factory  and  mill  at  seven, 
having  breakfasted  and  traveled  long  dis- 
tances in  steam  or  trolley  cars   in   order 
to  get  to  work  on  time.      Shame  on  you 
if  you  habitually  lie  in  bed  tiil  seven  or 
eight    or    nine    as    your    sluggish    body 
dictates,  and  then  arise  to  spend  an  hour 
on   the  daily  papers  and   dawdle  over  a 
magazine,  getting   down   to   honest  work 
it  may  be  at  ten  or  eleven,  and  possibly 


82  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

not  at  all.  A  man  with  so  little  conscience 
ought  to  be  whipped  out  of  the  ministry. 
Anthony  Trollope,  the  English  novelist, 
always  worked  with  his  watch  before  him, 
doing  a  prescribed  amount  of  work  each 
day,  saying  that  as  a  writer  he  was  bound 
by  the  same  rules  of  industry  as  those 
which  the  other  laborers  of  England  were 
bound  to  obey.  A  minister  of  the  Gospel 
ought  not  to  be  less  conscientious  than  a 
writer  of  fiction. 

2.  Work  if  you  can  without  a  break. 
You  cannot  do  it  every  day,  but  do  it 
when  you  can.  Desultory  thinking,  and 
thinking  done  in  fits  and  starts  between 
the  interruptions  of  intruding  visitors  and 
duties,  is  not  the  kind  of  thinking  which 
builds  up  the  preacher's  mind.  It  is  good 
for  him  every  day  to  be  for  a  while  alone. 
And  a  minister  can  be  alone  if  he  shuts 
himself  in,  and  refuses  to  be  disturbed. 
Some  ministers  do  not  believe  this,  but 
it  is  because  they  have  never  resolutely 
tried  it.     People   are   beautifully  sensible 


The  Growing  of  Sermons  83 

and  reasonable  in  all  such  matters  if  a 
minister  will  take  them  into  his  confi- 
dence. If  he  tells  them  that  he  desires 
certain  hours  each  day  for  uninterrupted 
study  and  then  proves  on  the  succeeding 
Sundays  that  he  has  really  studied  and 
not  done  something  else,  they  will  not 
only  be  glad  to  let  him  have  his  mornings, 
but  they  will  be  proud  that  they  have  a 
minister  who  can  preach.  Nothing  is  so 
galling  to  a  congregation  as  the  necessity 
of  saying,  "  Our  minister  is  a  good  man 
but  —  he  cannot  preach  !"  It  may  be,  of 
course,  that  some  crank  in  the  parish  will 
raise  an  outcry  if  the  minister  does  not  see 
him  at  any  hour  when  he  may  choose  to 
call,  but  let  no  one  be  thereby  disconcerted, 
for  the  cranks,  no  doubt,  are  stationed  by 
the  predestination  of  Almighty  God  in 
every  parish  to  test  the  patience  and  de- 
velop the  courage  of  those  who  preach 
the  word. 

It  is  said  that  Spurgeon,  when  he  was 
told   that  an  importunate   visitor   insisted 


84  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

on  seeing  him  on  the  ground  that  he 
was  a  servant  of  the  Lord,  sent  back 
this  all-sufficing  answer,  "  Tell  the  ser- 
vant of  the  Lord  that  I  am  engaged  with 
his  Master."  The  great  business  men  of 
New  York  City  do  not  see  every  stranger 
or  visitor  who  may  choose  to  call.  They 
barricade  themselves  behind  clerks  and 
attendants,  seeing  only  those  who  by  ap- 
pointment have  a  legitimate  claim  upon 
their  time.  If  men  engaged  in  earthly 
enterprises  thus  carefully  safeguard  their 
strength  in  order  to  do  better  work,  the 
minister  intrusted  with  business  of  the 
King  will  not  be  held  guiltless  if  he  sur- 
renders himself  to  the  whims  and  exac- 
tions of  every  careless  passer-by. 

3.  Never  forget  you  are  working 
for  the  immortal  sons  of  God.  For  them 
you  can  never  afford  to  do  work  that  is 
slipshod.  If  you  scamp  your  work  for 
men,  you  show  scant  reverence  for  their 
Maker.  No  matter  how  plain  and  hum- 
ble   your    congregation,    you    are    under 


The  Growing  of  Sermons  85 

obligation  to  do  your  best.  You  must 
never  come  down  to  people,  but  in 
every  case  go  up.  Ministers  of  the 
Gospel  are  not  sent  to  look  down  on  their 
brethren,  but  to  be  their  servant  and 
their  friend.  St.  Paul  wrote  his  letters  to 
little  groups  of  very  humble  folk.  The 
churches  of  his  day  were  made  up  for  the 
most  part  of  obscure  laboring  people, 
many  of  them  being  servants,  with  here 
and  there  a  slave.  The  church  in  Corinth 
was  not  different  from  the  churches  in 
other  places.  Paul  reminds  the  Corinthian 
Christians  that  not  many  wise,  not  many 
mighty,  not  many  noble,  were  called.  That 
is,  there  were  few  scholars  or  men  of  in- 
fluence or  representatives  of  high  society 
in  the  Corinthian  congregation.  Never- 
theless, in  the  writing  of  his  letter  Paul 
did  his  best.  He  wrote  them  one  of 
the  greatest  epistles  ever  penned  by  the 
hand  of  man.  In  that  letter  he  wrote 
a  hymn  of  love  which  excels  in  beauty 
everything  which  Plato  ever  wrote.     And 


86  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

along  with  the  hymn  of  love  he  sent  an 
argument  on  the  resurrection  which  out- 
strips in  majesty  and  eloquence  the  proud- 
est page  of  Aristotle. 

Do  not  be  afraid  of  throwing  away 
your  best  efforts  on  the  poorest  and 
plainest  people  God  lets  you  serve.  They 
may  be  ignorant,  obscure,  and  uninter- 
esting, but  probably  in  the  world  to 
come  your  highest  joy  will  be  the  mem- 
ory that  when  these  people  were  far 
away  from  the  Father's  house,  undevel- 
oped in  the  virtues  which  make  men 
strong  and  in  the  graces  which  make 
them  lovely,  you  were  kind  to  them  and 
helped  them,  heartening  them  for  fresh 
efforts  to  travel  up  the  long  and  toilsome 
way.  To  preach  to  these  "little  ones," 
as  though  they  were  indeed  the  brethren 
of  our  Lord,  this  is  an  act  which  in  God's 
universe  can  never  be  forgotten,  and 
which  is  certain  to  bring  an  exceeding 
great  reward. 

4.   Work  with  your  spirit  and  on  your 


The  Growing  of  Sermons  Sy 

spirit.  This  is  best  done  in  prayer. 
Men  who  would  preach  must  pray.  Few 
of  us  pray  enough.  The  reason  why  we 
pray  but  Httle  is  because  praying  is  hard 
work.  It  is  taxing  and  exhausting.  We 
do  not  easily  pray.  Our  minds  are  too 
undisciplined  and  our  hearts  too  worldly 
to  come  easily  into  communion  with  the 
Eternal  Spirit.  To  concentrate  the  atten- 
tion on  one  who  is  invisible,  and  to  bring 
all  the  faculties  into  subjection  and  pros- 
trate them  before  the  throne  requires  a 
forthputting  of  energy  of  which  even  the 
strongest  men  are  capable  only  for  a 
period  exceeding!)  brief.  But  this  is  work 
which  cannot  be  neglected.  It  is  every- 
thing for  a  preacher  to  be  attuned  to 
the  Eternal. 

The  strings  of  human  nature  must  be 
keyed  tightly  if  they  are  to  give  forth 
music  when  the  breath  of  heaven  blows 
through  them.  If  sermons  are  to  grow, 
they  must  have  sunshine.  In  prayer  man 
lets  in   the   sun.      When   Martin   Luther 


S^  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

was  busiest  he  prayed  the  most ;  when 
we  are  busiest  we  pray  the  least.  Because 
he  prayed  he  shook  the  crown  from  the 
head  of  the  Bishop  of  Rome.  You  will 
never  shake  the  crown  from  the  brow  of 
any  enemy  of  God  unless  you  are  men 
of  prayer.  The  apostles  were  not  mis- 
taken "when  they  put  praying  before 
preaching.  They  were  sent  out  to  preach 
the  word,  but  they  knew  they  could  not 
preach  until  they  prayed.  Their  great 
declaration  is  worthy  of  a  place  on  every 
minister's  study  wall :  "  We  will  continue 
steadfastly  in  prayer,  and  in  the  ministry 
of  the  word." 

5.  Work  with  your  head.  Use  the 
gray  matter  of  the  brain.  Develop  your 
mind  by  bringing  it  into  contact  with  the 
great  minds  of  the  race.  You  ought  to 
have  the  best  books  ever  written.  First 
of  all,  you  must  study  the  Bible.  I  do 
not  mean  read  it,  but  study  it.  It  is  a 
hard  book.  Certain  pages  are  opaque. 
Many  sentences  are  obscure.     There  are 


The  Growing  of  Sermons  89 

apparent  inconsistencies  and  contradic- 
tions. Many  things  are  hard  to  under- 
stand. Truth  lies  piled  up  in  masses, 
and  you  must  organize  it  and  put  it  into 
shape  for  modern  uses.  You  must  ask 
and  seek  and  knock,  or  you  will  never 
get  into  the  deep  meanings  of  scripture. 
You  must  dig,  and  you  must  dig  deep, 
and  no  money  is  better  spent  than  on 
books  which  will  help  you  get  still  deeper 
into  this  revelation  which  came  through 
holy  men  of  old. 

But  the  Bible  is  not  the  only  book. 
God  has  revealed  himself  through  other 
men  than  the  Jews.  English  literature 
contains  a  revelation.  You  ought  to 
read  poetry  for  vision  and  music  and 
color,  biography  for  stimulus  and  cour- 
age and  patience,  history  for  perspective 
and  proportion,  science  for  a  revela- 
tion as  wonderful  in  its  way  as  the 
revelation  which  came  through  Moses 
and  the  prophets  of  Israel,  fiction  for 
the  analysis  of  character  and  the  widen- 


90  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

ing  of  experience,  and  last  but  not  least 
theology,  the  queen  of  the  sciences,  and 
all  those  related  sciences  which  pay  obei- 
sance to  the  queen.  Shut  yourselves  up 
with  the  great  books.  Do  not  spend  too 
much  time  on  magazines  and  papers. 
Read  the  great  poets  and  the  great  biog- 
raphies and  the  great  histories  and  the 
great  novels,  and  strive  to  know  some- 
thing of  the  great  sciences  of  astronomy 
and  biology.  You  are  to  read  these  not 
in  order  to  parade  your  learning  before 
your  congregation,  but  because  great 
books  make  mental  blood  and  muscle 
and  bone. 

You  ought  to  know  ten  thousand  times 
more  than  you  ever  say.  A  preacher 
influences  his  congregation  not  simply 
by  what  he  says,  but  by  what  he  knows 
and  says  nothing  about.  We  are  not 
interested  in  the  man  who  tells  us  all 
he  knows.  A  sermon  is  only  a  cup 
of  water,  and  it  tastes  better  when  we 
know  that  it  comes  from  an  inexhaustible 


The  Groiving  of  Sermons  91 

spring.  A  sermon  is  only  a  drop  of  spray, 
and  it  has  a  new  sparkle  in  it  when  we 
feel  behind  it  the  roll  of  the  Atlantic. 
A  preacher  to  preach  well  must  have 
reserve  power,  and  reserve  power  comes 
from  the  preacher's  consciousness  that 
he  has  many  treasures  which  he  need 
not  use. 

6.  Work  with  your  pen.  Work  a  while 
every  day.  It  is  the  pen  which  makes 
the  exact  man,  and  it  is  the  pen  which 
makes  the  accurate  and  forceful  speaker. 
Writing  is  to  many  men  sheer  drudgery, 
but  it  is  a  form  of  drudgery  which  no 
preacher  should  try  to  escape.  Nothing 
is  so  surprising  to  the  average  man  as 
the  discovery  that  the  simplest  style  is, 
according  to  the  testimony  of  all  great 
writers,  the  result  of  enormous  labor.  It 
seems  almost  incredible  that  men  should 
be  willing  to  write  their  productions  over 
as  many  times  as  some  of  the  best-known 
writers  have  declared  to  be  their  practice. 
To  write  a  sermon  once  is  to  some  men 


92  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

almost  intolerable  drudgery,  and  to  write 
it  over  three  and  four  and  five  and  six 
times,  as  many  pulpit  princes  have  done, 
is  to  the  average  clergyman  an  utter  im- 
possibility. With  such  reluctance  to  sub- 
mit to  the  drudgery  of  the  pen,  no  wonder 
there  is  much  slovenly  and  ineffective  pul- 
pit English. 

An  English  writer  of  distinction  was 
in  the  habit  of  saying  to  all  aspirants 
for  literary  honors,  "  Fill  your  waste- 
basket."  The  advice  is  good  also  for 
preachers.  A  minister  should  fill  his 
waste-basket  again  and  again  before  he 
attempts  to  fill  his  people.  Nothing  is 
more  difficult  to  learn  than  the  art  of 
using  language  with  idiomatic  grace  and 
force.  To  select  the  broad-shouldered 
nouns  and  stalwart  verbs  which  will  best 
carry  the  weight  of  your  ideas,  to  choose 
adjectives  which  will  not  exaggerate  and 
adverbs  which  will  not  give  a  false  accent 
or  color,  to  frame  the  sentences  with  words 
so   clear  that   your   truth   will  blaze   out 


The  Groiving  of  Sermons  93 

through  them,  to  whip  your  paragraphs 
into  subjection  to  your  ruling  purpose  so 
that  they  shall  carry  your  thought  on  to 
fresh  coronations  in  the  hearts  of  those 
who  listen  to  you,  —  that  is  one  of  the 
greatest  achievements  to  which  any  mortal 
can  aspire,  and  a  victory  so  difficult  and 
glorious  that  to  win  it  is  worth  an  en- 
tire lifetime  of  heroic  and  unflagging  toil. 
Brethren,  use  your  pen.  It  is  the  key 
to  one  of  the  kingdoms  of  power. 

And  now  let  me  give  you  a  surprising 
caution :  Do  not  work  too  much  on  your 
sermons.  You  can  never  work  too  much 
on  yourself,  but  to  work  too  much  on  your 
sermons  is  dangerous  and  easy.  You  may 
work  so  long  upon  a  sermon  that  you 
spoil  it.  It  becomes  too  finished  and 
has  too  fine  a  polish.  It  is  as  beautiful 
as  a  statue  and  as  cold.  It  is  intrusively 
a  work  of  art.  It  smells  of  the  lamp.  It 
is  not  the  spontaneous  outgushing  of  a 
heart,  but  the  dried  and  studied  thing 
of    a   calculating   brain.      It  is   **  faultily 


94  T^^i^  Minister  as  Prophet 

faultless,  icily  regular,  splendidly  null.'* 
Avoid  the  perfection  which  smacks  of 
the  mechanical.  It  is  a  good  thing  that 
the  sermon  should  be  human.  It  may 
lose  nothing  of  its  power  if  it  have  an 
occasional  blemish.  Even  to  break  down 
in  grammar  or  to  get  tied  up  in  a  sen- 
tence is  not  a  sin  which  has  no  forgive- 
ness. 

The  letters  of  St.  Paul  are  all  the  more 
interesting  and  endearing  because  they 
were  written  hurriedly  and  at  white  heat. 
He  trips  now  and  then,  so  eager  is  he 
to  get  on,  and  occasionally  becomes  so 
tangled  in  his  construction  that  many  a 
critic  has  been  scandalized  and  declared 
him  a  bungler  in  the  use  of  Greek.  But 
the  broken  phrases  and  the  embroiled  sen- 
tences all  bear  witness  to  the  i?^\  that 
the  apostle  was  in  dead  earnest,  and  after 
every  slip  he  mounts  up  with  wings  as  an 
eagle  and  lets  us  see  what  his  great  soul 
can  do. 

It    is    an    old    story    many    times    re- 


The  Growing  of  Sermons  95 

peated,  but  one  which  never  loses  point, 
that  Father  Taylor,  the  Boston  preacher 
to  the  sailors,  once  got  so  entangled  in  the 
folds  of  one  of  his  rolling  sentences  that 
in  sheer  desperation  he  stopped,  saying  to 
his  congregation,  "  Brethren,  I  have  no 
idea  where  I  started  in  on  this  sentence, 
and  I  have  not  the  faintest  conception 
where  I  am  coming  out,  but  of  one  thing 
I  am  absolutely  certain,  and  that  is  that  I 
am  bound  for  the  kingdom  of  heaven." 
A  congregation  which  is  sure  that  the 
preacher  is  bound  for  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  and  desires  to  take  every  one 
else  with  him,  will  not  view  him  with  a 
critic's  eye,  even  though  he  occasionally 
drops  below  the  elegance  and  precision 
of  Demosthenes  and  Cicero. 

It  is  easy  also  for  a  minister  to  spoil  his 
people.  He  may  train  them  to  expect  word 
pictures  and  thrilling  pieces  of  denuncia- 
tion and  appeal.  He  may  educate  men  to 
look  upon  the  pulpit  as  a  stage,  and  upon 
the   preacher  as  an  actor,  and  they  may 


96  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

come  to  church  just  as  they  would  go  to 
the  art  gallery  or  the  opera.  It  is  bad 
for  the  preacher  when  his  parishioners 
begin  to  prattle  about  his  "beautiful" 
sermons,  and  endeavor  to  get  others  to 
come  to  church  because  they  have  such 
a  "beautiful"  preacher.  If  the  pound 
cake  is  so  artistically  decorated  that  every 
one  begins  to  talk  about  the  frosting,  it 
will  be  well  to  feed  the  people  for  a  sea- 
son on  brown  bread.  But  the  most  dis- 
astrous result  of  overworking  on  a  sermon 
is  the  impoverishment  which  may  come  to 
a  minister's  own  soul.  He  may  work  on 
his  sermons  until  he  becomes  decrepit  and 
palsied  in  intellectual  power  and  spiritu- 
ally thin.  He  may  make  so  much  of  the 
sermon  as  to  break  down  his  health.  It 
may  become  a  sort  of  white  elephant  for 
which  he  must  carry  water  every  day. 
He  may  think  about  it  so  much  that  it 
will  haunt  him  in  his  sleep,  and  give  him 
no  peace  day  or  night.  The  minister  is 
on  the  way  to  physical  bankruptcy  when 


The  Growing  of  Sermons  97 

the  sermon  pursues  him  like  a  fiend 
through  the  week. 

And  sympathy  with  men  may  also  be 
destroyed.  One  may  become  such  an 
artificer  in  thought  and  in  language  as 
to  become  fastidious  and  finical,  caring 
more  for  the  poHsh  of  a  sermon  than 
for  the  salvation  of  a  soul.  Many  a 
man  has  worried  more  over  a  paragraph 
in  his  sermon  than  over  a  soul  going 
down  to  perdition.  The  man  who  begins 
to  idolize  the  sermon,  and  worships 
it  every  day,  will  sometimes  become  so 
fussy  and  pedantic  that  he  cannot  trust 
himself  to  say  anything  whatever  unless 
it  has  been  carefully  wrought  out  with 
the  pen.  A  man  in  this  frame  of  mind 
is  unfitted  for  the  pulpit.  The  preacher 
must  of  all  men  be  human,  and  a  preacher 
is  no  longer  human  when  he  cannot  at 
least  sometimes  open  his  mouth  and  talk 
out  of  the  abundance  of  his  heart  like  a 
man. 

By    working    all    week   on    a   sermon, 


98  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

the  minister  robs  himself  of  opportunity 
to  range  through  those  wider  realms  of 
thought  which  are  absolutely  indispensa- 
ble to  the  growing  soul.  I  have  known 
men  to  work  so  hard  upon  their  sermons 
that  they  worked  themselves  down  into 
intellectual  shallowness  and  pulpit  impo- 
tence. A  sermon  is  nothing  but  a  key ; 
it  must  be  cast  and  filed,  but  it  must  not 
be  filed  until  there  is  no  strength  left  in 
the  hand  which  is  to  turn  it.  The  feed- 
i  ^^  (  ing  of  the  hand  is  surely  as  important 
^^'  \   as  the  filing  of  the  key.     A  sermon  is  a 

sword.  It  is  important  that  the  sword 
should  have  an  edge.  Sufficient  time 
should  be  given  to  its  sharpening.  But 
it  is  also  important  that  there  should  be 
a  strong  right  arm  capable  of  swinging 
the  sword.  A  sermon  is  a  rose.  You 
gain  nothing  by  picking  at  its  petals. 
Your  supreme  work  is  keeping  your  heart 
so  full  of  Christian  blood  that  sermonic 
roses  will  bloom  spontaneously  on  your 
lips.     Therefore,  work  on  your  soul  more 


The  Growing  of  Sermons  99 

than  on  your  sermon,  more  on  the  soil 
than  on  the  thing  which  you  wish  to 
bring  to  market. 

The  art  of  preaching  is  something 
Uke  the  art  of  agriculture.  The  suc- 
cessful farmer  works  incessantly  on  the 
soil.  He  fertilizes  it,  changes  the  fertil- 
izer from  time  to  time,  shifts  his  crops 
now  to  one  field,  now  to  another,  always 
studying  the  condition  of  the  soil.  He 
breaks  up  one  field,  lets  another  field 
lie  fallow,  works  with  the  soil  in  all  sorts 
of  ways  that  every  field  may  be  rich  and 
mellow.  The  secret  of  good  farming  lies 
in  constant  working  with  the  soil.  It  is, 
of  course,  important  that  the  seed  should 
be  good,  but  good  seed  avails  nothing  in  an 
exhausted  soil.  Now  a  preacher  is  noth- 
ing but  a  spiritual  farmer.  His  mind 
is  his  farm.  From  that  farm  he  must 
bring  repeated  harvests  for  the  feeding 
of  the  sons  of  God.  Unlike  the  farmer 
he  expects  a  harvest  every  seven  days. 
This  is  a  tremendous  drain.     Every  week 


lOO  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

two  sermons  must  be  garnered,  and  the 
sermons  will  be  determined  by  the  nature 
of  the  soil.  Unless  the  soil  is  fertilized 
heavily  from  day  to  day,  and  unless  it 
is  worked  with,  and  that  unceasingly,  the 
soil  is  certain  to  grow  shallow,  and  in  the 
pulpit  there  will  be  an  exhausted  man. 

That  is  the  reason  why  so  many  minis- 
ters cross  the  dead  line  early.  They  fail 
to  work  with  the  soil.  Many  of  them  are 
honest  and  faithful  men  who  have  tried 
with  loyal  heart  to  do  their  work  in  the 
fear  of  God  and  for  the  advancement  of 
his  kingdom,  but  they  have  worked  too 
exclusively  upon  their  sermons  and  have 
not  built  up  their  mind,  and  the  result  is 
that  year  by  year  they  have  dwindled  in 
the  pulpit,  and  by  and  by  have  not  been 
able  to  preach  acceptably  at  all.  Many 
a  minister  is  not  so  good  a  preacher  at 
forty  as  he  was  at  thirty,  and  hundreds 
cannot  preach  so  well  at  fifty  as  they  did 
at  forty.  A  congregation  knows  at  once 
whether   or  not  there  is  in  the  pulpit  an 


The  Growing  of  Sermons         loi 

exhausted  man.  No  experience  or  learn- 
ing is  a  substitute  for  freshness  and 
vitality.  Young  men  who  are  fresh  at 
thirty  are  immeasurably  superior  to  men, 
thin  and  exhausted  at  fifty,  for  the  work 
of  preaching  is  the  work  of  lifting,  and 
lifting  requires  a  man  of  strength.  Men 
who  work  incessantly  on  the  soil,  build- 
ing their  mind  up  four  square  in  mental 
alertness  and  capacity,  do  not  cross  the 
dead  line  ever,  but  work  on  successfully 
till  the  sun  goes  down. 

The  preacher  is  like  the  horticulturist, 
and  sermons  are  like  roses.  The  man  who 
would  produce  fine  roses  must  pay  attention 
to  the  conditions  under  which  fine  roses 
grow.  The  soil  must  be  rich,  the  sunshine 
must  be  abundant,  the  moisture  must  be 
sufficient,  and  simply  by  securing  these  con- 
ditions the  roses  come  forth  of  themselves. 
Man  supplies  the  conditions  and  God 
brings  forth  the  roses.  God  lets  man  help 
him  bring  forth  roses,  but  man's  work  is 
confined  largely  to  the  culture  of  the  soil. 


102  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

The  man  who  flings  himself  enthusiasti- 
cally into  the  production  of  his  sermons, 
determined  that  he  will  give  his  strength 
and  time  to  the  processes  of  sermon  build- 
ing, is  a  man  who  will  surely  fail  because 
he  is  beginning  wrong.  In  the  deepest 
sense  God  alone  makes  sermons,  and  what 
man  must  do  is  to  work  incessantly  on  the 
soil.  The  man  who  keeps  his  soul  fertil- 
ized and  mellow  will  never,  when  Sunday 
comes,  find  himself  without  a  sermon. 

The  problem  of  problems  then  for  every 
preacher  is  not  how  to  make  a  sermon,  but 
how  to  cultivate  the  soul  in  such  a  way  as 
that  there  shall  be  sap  sufficient  to  pro- 
duce sermonic  blossoms  which  shall  make 
the  Sabbaths  fragrant,  and  leaves  which 
shall  be  for  the  healing  of  the  congrega- 
tion. 

Let  me  urge  you  then  to  set  aside  one 
morning  from  the  very  start  on  which  you 
will  not  work  upon  your  sermon  —  work 
on  everything  else  than  that.  Put  your 
sermon  topic   into  your  mind  as  early  as 


The  Growing  of  Sermons         103 

you  wish,  and  let  it  lie  there  undisturbed. 
There  is  such  a  thing  as  unconscious  cere- 
bration, and  probably  this  goes  on  even 
in  one's  sleep.  It  is  surprising  how  a  sub- 
ject once  dropped  into  the  mind  gathers 
round  it  kindred  material  from  the  experi- 
ence which  comes  to  one  from  day  to  day. 
A  magnet  drawn  through  sand  in  which 
there  are  iron  filings  will  not  more  surely 
pick  out  the  iron  than  will  an  idea  held 
in  the  mind  pick  out  related  ideas  from 
every  book  one  reads  and  from  every  con- 
versation. An  active-minded  man  cannot 
cast  a  text  into  his  soul  without  discovering 
on  its  removal,  after  the  lapse  of  several 
weeks,  that  other  thoughts  have  crystallized 
around  it  and  that  a  sermon  is  in  the  pro- 
cess of  formation. 

This  unconscious  sermonic  work  will 
go  forward  through  the  days.  But  on 
one  day  of  every  week  banish  your 
sermon  from  your  conscious  thought 
and  give  yourself  to  some  favorite  and 
rewarding  study.     For  a  day  work  only 


I04  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

on  the  soil.  At  first  one  day  will  prob- 
ably be  all  that  you  can  spare,  for  in  the 
early  years  a  deal  of  time  is  required  to 
give  the  sermon  form.  Special  reading 
must  be  done,  throwing  light  on  next  Sun- 
day's subject,  and  the  structure  of  the 
sermon  is  sometimes  baffling,  and  language 
too  is  intractable  and  stubborn ;  and  what 
with  his  language  and  his  plan  and  his 
ideas,  the  beginning  preacher  has  much 
to  do. 

Four  mornings  on  two  sermons  are 
none  too  many  for  the  average  man 
through  the  beginning  years.  But  as  soon 
as  possible  the  minister  should  cut  down 
his  sermon  mornings  to  three,  giving  two 
entire  mornings  to  biblical,  scientific,  or 
historical  studies.  On  these  two  mornings 
let  him  work  upon  the  soil,  and  his  people 
will  discover  that  his  sermons  have  new 
fragrance  and  flavor.  After  a  few  years 
it  may  be  that  the  sermonic  work  can  be 
crowded  into  two  mornings,  and  three 
whole   mornings  be   left  for  the  building 


The  Growing  of  Sermons         105 

up  of  mental  nerve  and  bone.  Wide  study 
in  these  days  is  essential  that  men  may 
see  our  problems  in  true  perspective  and 
right  relations.  A  little  man  with  narrow 
view  can  cause  a  world  of  trouble.  Our 
problems  are  intricate  and  difficult,  and 
only  ministers  of  extensive  learning  are 
capable  of  grappling  with  themes  so 
great. 

The  three  mornings  given  to  church  his- 
tory or  Christian  doctrine  will  make  you 
wiser  when  you  come  to  deal  with  the 
next  problem  that  confronts  you  in  your 
parish  work.  They  will  also  give  you  a 
balance  of  judgment  and  mental  poise 
which  your  people  will  feel,  although  they 
may  not  know  their  cause.  It  may  be  that 
after  years  of  training  you  can  give  shape 
to  two  sermons  in  a  single  morning,  re- 
serving four  mornings  sacred  for  study 
and  research.  It  is  said  that  Dean  Farrar, 
in  his  later  years,  never  spent  more  than 
three  hours  on  a  sermon,  and  that  is  prob- 
ably enough  for  any  man  who  is  full  of 


I06  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

the  Christian  spirit  and  has  a  disciplined 
and  well-furnished  mind.  I  suppose  that 
in  the  ideal  preacher's  life  there  would  be 
no  time  at  all  set  aside  for  working  on  the 
sermon,  but  that  the  preacher  simply  doing 
his  work  from  day  to  day,  and  keeping 
his  mind  moving  through  atmospheres  im- 
pregnated with  ideas,  would  on  the  Lord's 
day  find  a  message  already  formulated  in 
his  heart,  and  be  able  to  stir  men's  souls 
and  lift  them,  simply  by  opening  his 
mouth  and  allowing  the  message  to  come 
out. 

But  no  such  ideal  preaching  is  possible 
without  long  preliminary  years  of  patient 
and  painstaking  toil.  There  are  men  who 
have  approached  it.  I  think  I  have  read 
somewhere  that  Spurgeon  once  declared 
that  if  he  were  given  seven  days  in  which 
to  prepare  a  sermon,  he  would  devote  all  the 
week  but  the  last  half  hour  to  other  things, 
and  get  his  sermon  within  these  last  thirty 
minutes.  Spurgeon  was  an  indefatigable 
worker.     He  could  do  as  much  work  in  a 


The  Growing  of  Sermons         107 

day  as  ten  ordinary  men.  He  had  an  im- 
mense library  which  he  knew  how  to  use, 
and  he  was  also  working  constantly  with 
men.  Living  thus  close  to  God  and  work- 
ing thus  enthusiastically  with  men,  it  was 
possible  after  long  years  of  practice  for 
him  to  formulate  a  sermon  in  half  an 
hour. 

Our  greatest  American  preacher  was 
able  to  do  the  same.  Henry  Ward 
Beecher,  in  his  early  years,  worked  assidu- 
ously with  books  and  pen,  but  in  later  life 
he  often  prepared  his  sermon  after  his 
Sunday  morning  breakfast.  This  does  not 
mean  that  he  did  not  work  all  through  the 
week.  His  active  brain  was  never  idle. 
His  great  heart  was  always  engaged  in 
some  mighty  labor.  As  he  himself  once 
expressed  it,  he  was  like  a  woman  with  a 
pan  of  dough ;  he  was  kneading  the  dough 
all  the  time.  On  Sunday  morning  he  sim- 
ply gave  shape  to  material  which  had  in 
his  soul  become  thoroughly  and  vitally  his 
own.     Or  to  change  the  figure,  the  cream 


lo8  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

kept  rising  through  the  week,  and  on  the 
Lord's  day  he  skimmed  the  cream,  and 
gave  it  to  the  people. 

What  is  a  sermon  but  a  cup  of  cream 
skimmed  from  the  preacher's  life  ?  It 
is  said  that  one  of  the  most  noted 
preachers  of  London  usually  prepares 
his  sermon  on  the  day  on  which  it  is 
to  be  delivered.  He  works  incessantly 
through  the  week,  and  then  on  Sunday 
gives  utterance  to  the  truth  which  is  at 
that  time  uppermost  in  his  soul.  But  all 
such  hasty  preparation  of  the  letter  of 
the  sermon  should  never  be  attempted 
until  after  years  of  stern  self-discipline 
and  long-continued  practice  in  the  art  of 
self-expression.  The  sermon  at  its  best 
estate  is  not  a  fine  oration  or  a  labored 
argument,  but  the  simple  testimony  to  the 
reality  of  things  spiritual  and  eternal  of 
a  witness  whose  life  is  hid  with  Christ 
in  God. 

Make  the  tree  good.  This  is  the  one 
thing  necessary.     The  sermon  is  the  man, 


The  Growing  of  Sermons         109 

and  upon  the  man  everything  depends. 
Pulpit  power  rests  not  on  your  learning 
nor  on  your  mastery  of  the  technique  of 
expression,  but  on  the  radiance  and  sweet- 
ness of  your  personality.  You  must  be  so 
good  and  true  and  Christlike  that  you 
yourself  shall  seem  to  be  a  part  of  the 
Christian  revelation,  and  the  eternal  truth 
of  God  seem  to  be  bursting  into  fresh 
splendor  on  your  lips.  Any  man  can  re- 
peat the  words  of  Jesus  and  the  apostles, 
but  not  every  man  can  repeat  them  as 
though  they  were  indeed  his  native  speech. 
Any  man  can  toy  with  the  conceptions  of 
the  sacred  scriptures,  but  not  every  one 
can  move  among  them  as  though  they 
were  features  of  the  familiar  world  in 
which  he  lives  and  moves  and  has  his 
being.  You  should  be  so  filled  with  the 
Holy  Spirit  that  helpful,  precious  pearls  of 
speech  shall  fall  as  naturally  from  your 
lips  as  miracles  did  from  the  finger  tips  of 
Jesus,  and  you  ought  to  live  so  near  to 
God  that   when   you   speak,  the  place  in 


no  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

which  you  stand  shall  be  filled  with  holy 
light,  and  all  the  people  going  homeward 
shall  feel  a  spiritual  peace  and  exaltation, 
knowing  that  something  beautiful  has 
passed  their  way. 


#*■ 


IV 

Form  and  Manner 

When  a  man  appears  before  us  with  a 
message,  the  heart  has  three  questions. 
The  first  is,  "Who jsJieT^  If  he  is  a 
lunatic,  then  that  information  is  sufficient. 
We  do  not  care  to  listen  any  more.  If, 
however,  he  is  a  man  of  sanity  and  intelli- 
gence, there  is  a  second  question,  *^M/hat 
is  his  jmessao^e  ? "  Is  it  a  triviality  or  a 
vagary  or  an  explosion  of  prejudice  or  pas- 
sion, sound  and  fury  signifying  nothing  ? 
If  so,  no  matter  who  he  is,  we  do  not  care 
to  hear  him.  But  if  he  is  a  man  of  sense 
delivering  a  sober  message,  then  there  is  a 
third  question,  *'jiowJs_h£_going^jto_say 
it .? "  Will  he  deliver  his  message  bunglingly 
and  obscurely,  slovenly  and  with  an  insult 
to  taste,  or  will  he  present  it  in  a  way  which 
III 


112  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

will  open  the  heart  and  make  the  new  truth 
beautiful?  Who  is  he,  what  is  his  mes- 
sage, how  is  he  delivering  it,  —  these  are 
the  three  questions  which  every  congrega- 
tion is  sure  to  ask.  To  the  third  question 
your  attention  is  now  invited.  It  is  not  the 
first  question,  to  be  sure,  nor  is  it  yet  the 
second,  and  because  it  is  only  third  there 
are  those  who  pass  it  by  altogether.  To 
them  the  only  things  important  are  that 
the  messenger  should  be  reliable  and  that 
the  message  should  be  momentous,  and 
with  these  things  settled,  it  matters  not 
what  is  the  form  or  manner.  The  preacher 
who  reasons  thus  is  guilty  of  a  cardinal 
blunder  which  will  cripple  him  in  all  his 
life  and  work. 

Above  all  the  other  religions  of  the 
world  the  Christian  religion  relies  upon 
the  tongue.  There  are  religions  which 
rely  upon  the  sword,  and  there  are  others 
which  rely  upon  the  state,  and  there  are 
others  which  rely  upon  the  example  of 
dumb  devotees,  but  the  Christian  religion 


Form  and  Manner  113 

from  the  beginning  has  relied  upon  the 
tongue.  The  founder  of  Christianity  was 
a  preacher,  and  the  men  whom  he  sent  out 
were  ordained  to  preach.  They  were  to  take 
no  weapons  with  them ;  the  world  was  to 
be  overcome  simply  by  their  words.  The 
religion  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  enthrones 
and  glorifies  the  tongue. 

Language  thus  assumes  a  place  of 
unique  significance  in  the  work  of  the 
Christian  minister.  It  is  the  instrument 
by  which  he  is  to  work  out  his  purposes, 
the  weapon  by  which  he  is  to  subdue  the 
world.  It  is  the  rod  by  which  he  is  to 
work  his  miracles.  Demosthenes  struck 
the  Greeks  and  the  Greeks  struck  the 
King  of  Macedon.  Peter  the  Hermit 
struck  Europe  and  Europe  struck  the 
Turk.  Wendell  PhiUips  struck  the  North 
and  the  North  struck  down  slavery.  You 
must  with  your  tongue  so  strike  your 
congregation  that  your  congregation  shall 
want  to  smite  down  every  form  of  evil. 
Language  is  the  train  on  which  the  ideas 


114  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

of  redemption  are  to  be  conveyed  from  the 
preacher's  soul  to  others.  "Take  heed 
to  your  language,"  then,  would  seem  to 
be  an  exhortation  to  which  every  minister 
of  Christ  should  give  ready  ear. 

Just  as  in  certain  cities  the  railroad  train 
stops  and  every  wheel  of  every  car  is  care- 
fully inspected,  men  with  flaring  torches 
and  hammers  of  steel,  looking  with  eye 
and  listening  with  ear  for  any  open  or  con- 
cealed defect,  and  all  in  order  that  not  a 
single  life  may  be  put  in  jeopardy  in  the 
crossing  of  river  or  climbing  of  mountains, 
so  ought  the  words  of  every  sermon  be 
subjected  to  the  closest  scrutiny  that  not 
one  thought  shall  fail  to  make  the  transit 
from  the  preacher's  to  the  hearer's  soul. 
For  what  are  words  but  verbal  cars  in 
which  are  conveyed  the  food  and  raiment 
for  the  children  of  the  King  !  In  them 
are  packed  thought  and  hope  and  love, 
sympathy  and  tenderness  and  pity,  uplift 
and  outlook  and  new  horizon,  and  all 
these  must  be  carried   from  the    soul   of 


Form  and  Manner  115 

the  preacher  into  the  souls  of  those  for 
whom  these  treasures  are  intended. 

A  preacher  intent  on  his  work  must  give 
constant  attention  to  his  words.  It  is  too 
often  forgotten  that  language  is  the  body 
of  thought  and  that  thought  depends  for 
its  effectiveness  on  its  body.  It  is  with 
ideas  as  it  is  with  men,  —  they  are  worth- 
less upon  earth  without  a  body.  No  dis- 
embodied man  has  ever  done  anything  in 
history,  neither  has  a  disembodied  idea. 
The  ideas  which  are  mighty  are  the  ideas 
which  are  expressed,  and  the  ideas  which 
prevail  are  those  which  have  received  the 
most  vigorous  and  stalwart  expression. 
The  body  of  thought  must  be  nourished 
just  as  truly  as  the  body  of  man.  Lan- 
guage must  be  fed  if  it  is  to  be  healthy, 
and  thin  and  pallid  language  is  as 
feeble  and  ineffective  in  the  realm  of 
thought  as  are  anaemic  and  emaciated 
men  in  the  realm  of  the  world's  work 
and  battle.  To  feed  his  vocabulary  and 
nourish    his    style    is    one    of    the    most 


Ii6  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

important   works    which   a   preacher    has 
to  do. 

And  while  this  is  important  for  every 
minister  of  Christ,  whatever  his  eccle- 
siastical connections,  it  is  doubly  impera- 
tive for  a  minister  who  belongs  to  any 
branch  of  the  Christian  church  which  has 
laid  aside  the  sensuous  symbols  of  medise- 
valism.  There  is  something  about  the 
celebration  of  the  mass  which  is  warming. 
The  great  altar,  the  candles,  the  incense, 
the  robes,  all  appeal  to  the  eye  and  shed 
a  radiance  into  the  heart  of  the  sympa- 
thetic worshiper.  The  paintings  and  the 
pictured  windows  and  the  statues  in 
churches  which  have  discarded  the  in- 
cense and  the  candles,  all  appeal  to  the 
eye  and  serve  to  rob  worship  of  its  pale- 
ness and  coldness.  But  in  many  a  church 
there  is  nothing  of  the  dim  religious  light. 
There  are  no  storied  windows,  no  glori- 
ous paintings,  no  statues  of  our  Lord  or 
his  apostles.  All  is  plain  and  drab  and 
bare.     Upon    the    minister    depends    the 


Form  and  Mannef  Wj 

lighting  up  of  all  the  worship.  He  must 
do  this  work  with  his  words.  His  phrases 
must  be  candles  giving  forth  a  sacred 
light.  His  sentences  must  be  paintings 
picturing  things  which  the  heart  adores. 
His  paragraphs  must  be  incense  filling 
all  the  place  with  a  heavenly  aroma. 
His  words  must  give  to  the  church  color 
and  fragrance,  and  life  and  fire,  and  the 
whole  sermon  beautiful  with  scented  and 
tinted  words  must  leave  the  soul  flooded 
with  melody  in  the  immediate  presence  of 
God.  With  no  liturgy  and  no  symbolism, 
bare  and  naked  indeed  is  the  worship  of 
a  Protestant  church  if  the  preacher  uses 
only  threadbare  and  faded  words. 

The  power  of  language  can  scarcely  be 
overestimated.  Arnold  says  that  Gray 
doubled  his  force  by  his  style.  So  can 
every  preacher.  President  Eliot  of  Har- 
vard does  not  put  the  case  too  strongly 
when  he  says  that  "  it  is  a  liberal  educa- 
tion which  teaches  a  man  to  speak  and 
write    his    native   language    strongly,  ac- 


Ii8  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

curately,  and  persuasively.  It  is  a  suffi- 
cient reward  for  the  whole  long  course 
of  twelve  years  spent  in  liberal  study." 
President  Eliot  owes  not  a  little  of  his 
wide  influence  over  American  thought  to 
the  fact  that  he  is  master  of  English. 
When  one  studies  the  men  who  are  to- 
day foremost  in  the  pulpit,  he  discovers 
that  without  exception  they  are  men  with 
great  gifts  of  expression.  The  man  who 
has  probably  exerted  the  widest  influence 
within  the  last  ten  years  over  the  religious 
thought  of  America  could  not  have  done 
it  had  it  not  been  for  his  style.  His 
language  is  as  clear  as  a  mountain  brook, 
with  his  thoughts  like  shining  pebbles 
at  the  bottom  of  it.  For  his  purpose  the 
style  is  well-nigh  perfect,  luminous,  and 
transparent  as  the  almost  matchless  diction 
of  Voltaire. 

Another  American  preacher  subdues 
and  solemnizes  his  congregation  by  means 
of  his  beautiful  and  stately  English.  He 
has  been  a  student  of   poetry   and  phi- 


Form  and  Manner  119 

losophy,  and  his  style  has  in  it  some- 
thing of  the  majesty  of  Milton,  with 
now  and  then  a  hint  of  the  massiveness 
of  Shakespeare,  and  here  and  there  the 
sweetness  and  the  melody  of  Tennyson. 
The  style  is  not  so  clear  as  that  of  our 
other  preacher,  but  even  the  occasional 
obscurity  is  not  without  its  charm.  There 
are  masses  of  golden  haze,  but  it  is  the 
haze  that  lies  on  the  bosom  of  a  wide, 
deep  sea.  One  of  the  mightiest  of  living 
English  preachers  has  a  style  quite  dif- 
ferent still.  His  language  fits  his  thought 
as  tightly  as  the  skin  fits  the  flesh.  It 
contains  no  wrinkle,  and  is  so  natural  and 
so  true  that  unless  you  sit  before  it  as  a 
critic  and  pay  close  attention  to  the  words, 
you  will  not  notice  the  language  at  all. 
Style  is  perfect  when  it  becomes  in- 
visible. 

Brethren,  believe  in  the  power  of  words. 
They  have  a  force  almost  divine,  and  this 
force  is  yours  if  you  know  how  to  use  it. 
Think  of  the  great  work  which  you  must 


120  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

do.  By  means  of  words  you  must  help 
men  to  see  the  sublime  contours  of  great 
duties  and  the  shining  outlines  of  fair 
ideals.  By  language  you  are  to  cause  the 
blind  to  see,  and  also  the  deaf  to  hear. 
By  words  you  are  to  help  men  hear  that 
music  of  the  spirit  world  which  soothes 
and  charms  and  lifts  and  blesses.  By 
words  you  are  to  make  men  feel.  You 
are  to  control  for  an  hour  the  emotional 
tides  of  the  heart.  You  are  to  compel 
men  to  feel  the  smart  and  sting  of  con- 
demned sinners  and  also  the  raptures  of 
forgiveness.  You  are  to  bring  men  to 
decision,  helping  them  to  choose,  and  their 
choice  though  brief  is  yet  endless.  Since 
all  this  and  more  must  be  done  by  means 
of  words,  how  foolish  for  any  minister  to 
neglect  the  study  of  expression.  What- 
ever gift  a  man  may  have  at  the  beginning, 
it  should  be  cultivated  through  the  years, 
and  every  year  should  be  regretted  which 
does  not  witness  a  progress  in  the  master- 
ing of  words, 


Form  and  Manner  121 

The  human  heart  is  sensitive  to  simple 
and  lovely  speech.  The  amoeba,  one  of 
the  lowest  of  microscopic  organisms,  is 
not  insensible  to  color.  It  has  no  eyes, 
but  in  some  mysterious  way  it  feels  a 
difference  in  colors.  There  is  no  con- 
gregation, however  untrained  and  unde- 
veloped, which  cannot  feel  the  difference 
between  purple  and  dull-colored  speech. 
The  plainest  and  least-cultivated  people 
will  respond  to  words  fitly  spoken,  and  the 
dullest  Ustener  will  be  aroused  by  a  para- 
graph which  gives  forth  a  flash  of  crimson 
or  a  gleam  of  gold.  You  must  be  a  man 
of  visions  and  you  must  be  also  a  man  of 
words,  and  the  work  of  fitting  them  to- 
gether is  one  of  the  most  critical  and  deli- 
cate tasks  which  a  prophet  of  the  Lord 
is  called  upon  to  do.  The  best  EngHsh 
spoken  anywhere  ought  to  be  heard  in  the 
Christian  pulpit. 

Endeavor  to  avoid  mispronunciations. 
Many  ministers  are  inexcusably  careless 
on  this  point.     There  are  men  who  go  on 


122  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

mispronouncing  familiar  words  for  years, 
and  it  seems  as  though  the  mispronounced 
words  are  the  very  words  which  most  fre- 
quently occur.  There  are  in  almost  every 
congregation  cultured  people  to  whose 
ears  a  mispronunciation  is  a  blow,  and  a 
person  of  taste  cannot  be  struck  again  and 
again  on  the  same  nerve  without  the  nerve 
crying  out  in  pain.  Use  the  dictionary 
and  use  it  often.  Keep  it  out  beside  your 
Bible.  Whenever  in  doubt  consult  it.  Go 
to  it  even  though  you  are  well-nigh  certain 
that  you  already  know.  Let  every  unfa- 
miliar word  lead  you  to  it,  and  get  out  of 
bed  if  need  be  to  settle  a  dictionary  problem 
which  has  risen  in  your  mind.  There  are 
young  people  in  every  congregation  to 
whom  a  mispronunciation  is  an  unpardon- 
able offense.  Verbal  blunders  prove  to 
them  that  the  preacher  is  at  least  on  one 
point  ignorant,  and  being  ignorant  on  one 
point  he  may  be  ignorant  on  all.  It  is  pos- 
sible to  weaken  one's  influence  forever  by 
slips  which  might  easily  have  been  avoided. 


Form  and  Manner  123 

And  then  beware  of  worn-out  words. 
A  minister's  vocabulary  is  subjected  to 
terrific  usage,  and  it  will  grow  old  and 
threadbare  unless  constantly  renewed. 
Unless  he  is  alert  he  will  find  himself 
using  the  same  word  again  and  again 
until  it  becomes  odious  or  a  joke.  When 
a  preacher  uses  the  same  word  twenty 
times  in  his  prayer,  and  then  begins 
to  use  it  twenty  times  or  more  in  his 
sermon,  the  mind  is  distracted  from  the 
thought,  and  the  hearer  begins  to  calculate 
how  soon  the  word  will  come  out  again. 

It  is  well  from  time  to  time  to  cull  out 
the  poor  abused  and  broken-down  words 
and  shut  them  up  in  an  asylum  until  they 
recover  from  their  exhaustion.  Words  have 
nervous  prostration,  as  human  beings  have, 
and  when  long  overworked  they  should 
have  an  outing  and  a  rest.  Avoid  the  use 
of  any  dialect  unknown  to  the  people  to 
whom  you  preach.  There  are  various  dia- 
lects used  by  Americans,  and  the  preacher 
is  likely  to  have  his  own.   The  lawyers  have 


124  1^^^  Minister  as  Prophet 

a  dialect  and  the  doctors  have  a  different 
one,  and  the  theologians  one  different  still. 
Avoid  the  dialect  of  every  special  class, 
and  use  the  broad,  plain,  human  speech  of 
God's  common  people.  When  our  mis- 
sionaries go  across  the  sea,  they  give  years 
to  mastering  the  language  of  the  people  to 
whom  they  have  been  sent.  The  time  is 
well  spent,  for  no  pentecost  is  possible 
until  men  hear  the  gospel  in  the  language 
in  which  they  were  born. 

There  are  three  rules  which  should  never 
be  forgotten.  First  of  all  be  clear.  You 
must  be  clear.  If  you  are  not  clear,  how 
can  you  be  understood,  and  what  is  the  use 
of  preaching  if  people  do  not  understand 
what  you  say .''  St.  Paul  has  expressed  the 
opinion  of  every  man  of  sense  upon  this 
matter :  "  I  had  rather  speak  five  words 
that  I  might  teach  others  than  ten  thousand 
words  in  an  unknown  tongue."  All  the 
great  preachers  from  Paul  to  Moody  have 
agreed  upon  that  one  point.  Augustine 
was  a  teacher  of  grammar  and  rhetoric, 


Form  and  Manner  125 

and  had  a  fondness  for  the  rotundity  and 
finish  of  florid  Latin,  but  when  he  became 
a  preacher,  he  laid  aside  his  polished 
rhetoric  and  spoke  in  the  Latin  of  the 
common  people.  Martin  Luther  always 
kept  his  eye  upon  the  peasants,  saying 
that  if  he  could  speak  in  language  which 
they  could  understand,  then  all  classes 
would  be  instructed  and  edified. 

Make  it  your  ambition  to  be  clear.  It  is 
your  business  to  be  understood.  If  you  are 
not  intelligible  to  every  attentive  Hstener  of 
average  intelligence,  then  offer  no  excuses, 
but  find  out  what  the  trouble  is.  Do  not 
say  you  are  too  deep,  for  the  chances  are 
you  are  knee  deep  in  the  mud.  Deepest 
water  is  always  clear,  and  it  is  when  we 
reach  a  puddle  that  we  cannot  see  the 
bottom.  Your  lack  of  clearness  is  in  all 
probability  due  to  shallowness,  and  by 
becoming  deeper  you  will  be  more  easily 
understood.  Do  not  think  you  are  great 
just  because  you  can  preach  only  to  culti- 
vated   people.      That   is    the  sign  of    a 


126  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

mediocre  preacher.  The  great  preachers 
through  the  centuries  have  all  been  able  to 
reach  all  classes  of  the  people.  Great 
poets  do  the  same.  The  poems  of  Homer 
were  appreciated  both  by  Pericles  and  also 
by  the  sausage  sellers  in  the  streets  of 
Athens.  The  poems  of  Virgil  were  relished 
by  the  Emperor  Augustus  and  also  by  the 
shepherds  and  vine-dressers  of  Italy.  The 
poems  of  Shakespeare  were  the  delight  of 
the  greatest  wits  of  the  Elizabethan  court, 
and  were  also  popular  among  the  ground- 
lings from  the  lowest  streets  of  London. 
Robert  Burns  warms  the  hearts  of  the 
greatest  Scottish  theologians,  and  stirs  the 
blood  of  the  farmer  boy  following  the  plow. 
It  is  characteristic  of  greatness  that 
it  appeals  to  the  universal  human  heart. 
America's  two  greatest  preachers,  —  and 
the  only  two  supremely  great,  —  Henry 
Ward  Beecher  and  Phillips  Brooks,  could 
preach  to  students  and  professors  and 
also  to  artisans  and  servant  girls.  If 
you  cannot  be  understood   except  by  the 


Form  and  Manner  127 

elitey  it  is  not  because  you  are  so  deep, 
but  because  your  organ  is  deficient  in 
the  number  of  its  stops.  The  deepest 
preacher  of  the  ages  was  Jesus  of  Nazareth, 
and  all  his  language  is  simplicity  itself. 
What  is  simpler  than  this }  "  He  that 
would  save  his  life  must  lose  it,"  but  it  is 
deeper  than  plummet  can  sound.  What  is 
more  easily  understood  than  this  }  "  Ex- 
cept ye  become  as  a  little  child  ye  cannot 
enter  into  the  kingdom  of  God,"  but  who 
can  fathom  the  depths  of  it }  The  man 
who  lay  on  Jesus'  breast  was  also  simple  in 
his  style.  The  first  chapter  of  the  fourth 
gospel  is  written  for  the  most  part  in 
monosyllables,  but  it  is  the  deepest  page  of 
composition  ever  written.  It  was  Paul  who 
said  so  simply,  *'  Christ  died  for  our  sins," 
but  even  the  angels  try  to  see  the  bottom 
of  it  and  are  not  able.  If,  therefore,  a 
preacher  deals  in  long  and  opaque  words, 
it  is  not  because  his  thought  is  deep,  but 
because  he  has  not  yet  mastered  the  art  of 
putting  things. 


128  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

Another  rule  is :  Be  simple.  The  ex- 
hortation of  Charles  Lamb  to  Coleridge, 
**  Cultivate  simplicity,"  should  be  heeded 
by  the  preacher.  Elaborateness  is  out  of 
place  in  these  hurried  days,  and  rhetorical 
tucks  and  flounces  should  be  mercilessly 
cut  off.  Milton  said  that  poetry  should  be 
simple,  sensuous,  and  impassioned,  and  that 
is  also  what  a  sermon  ought  to  be.  It 
should  be  simple  in  its  language,  vivid  in 
its  imagery,  and  shot  through  and  through 
with  subtle  fire.  Daniel  Webster  still 
holds  his  place  as  one  of  America's  greatest 
orators,  and  one  of  the  secrets  of  his  power 
is  the  simplicity  of  his  style.  While  yet  a 
young  man  he  came  to  the  conclusion  that, 
as  he  was  to  earn  his  living  by  talking  to 
plain  people,  it  was  necessary  that  he 
should  learn  to  use  plain  language.  In 
simplicity  of  diction  Webster  has  never  had 
but  one  superior,  and  that  is  Abraham 
Lincoln.  Lincoln's  speech  at  Gettysburg 
registers  the  high-water  mark  of  effective 
English  prose,  and  that  speech  is  the  sim- 
plest in  our  literature. 


Form  and  Manner  129 

But  how  can  one  be  simple?  By  the 
study  of  the  masters.  Be  a  constant 
reader  of  great  books.  Read  Newman 
for  music,  and  Ruskin  for  color,  and  Car- 
lyle  for  pictures,  and  John  Morley  for 
discrimination,  and  Mark  Rutherford  for 
simplicity.  Read  Tennyson  as  long  as 
you  live.  His  "  Idylls  of  the  King  "  are  in 
my  judgment  the  finest  piece  of  English 
written  in  the  nineteenth  century.  Of 
course  you  will  all  read  Shakespeare,  the 
unrivaled  master  of  human  speech.  Read 
him  for  his  simpHcity  and  also  for  the  art 
of  using  short  and  vivid  words.  Contrast 
the  English  of  the  speech  he  puts  into  the 
mouth  of  Mark  Antony  with  the  English 
of  many  modern  sermons. 

"  I  am  no  orator,  as  Brutus  is ; 
But,  as  you  know  me  all,  a  plain  blunt  man, 
That  love  my  friend  ;  and  that  they  know  full  well 
That  gave  me  public  leave  to  speak  of  him  : 
For  I  have  neither  wit,  nor  words,  nor  worth  "  — 

Mark    those    monosyllables.      Would    we 
have  used  them  ?     No.     We  would   have 


I30  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

said,  "  For  I  have  neither  mental  acumen, 
nor  an  extensive  vocabulary,  nor  ethical 
significance."  That  is  what  is  the  matter 
with  much  of  our  modern  preaching ;  it  is 
too  full  of  "  ethical  significance  "  and  "  ex- 
tensive vocabulary"  and  "mental  acumen," 
and  has  not  enough  of  this  "  wit  and  words 
and  worth." 

"  Action,  nor  utterance,  nor  the  power  of  speech. 
To  stir  men's  blood!" 

Mark  that !  We  would  have  said  "  arouse 
men's  emotions,"  but  Shakespeare  knows 
how  to  find  the  heart,  and  his  words  jab 
like  rapiers  —  "  stir  men's  blood  !  " 

"  I  only  speak  right  on ; 
I  tell  you  that  which  you  yourselves  do  know ; 
Shew  you  sweet  Csesar's  wounds,  poor,  poor  dumb 
mouths." 

Do  you  notice  that  pathos }  Change  those 
monosyllables  into  "  miserable,  pitiable, 
inarticulate  mouths,"  and  all  the  pathos 
has  vanished. 

"  But  were  I  Brutus, 
And  Brutus  Antony,  there  were  an  Antony 


Form  and  Manner  131 

Would  ruffle  up  your  spirits,  and  put  a  tongue 
In  every  wound  of  Caesar,  that  should  move 
The  stones  of  Rome  to  rise  and  mutiny." 

That  is  the  kind  of  English  which  preach- 
ers need,  and  the  more  you  have  of  it  the 
mightier  you  will  be  in  swaying  the  hearts 
of  men.  The  list  would  not  be  complete 
without  the  Bible.  It  is  Shakespeare  and 
Tennyson,  Ruskin  and  Carlyle,  Newman 
and  Mark  Rutherford  combined.  You 
will  never  preach  as  God  intended  you 
to  preach  unless  you  are  a  constant,  keen- 
eyed  student  of  the  language  of  the 
scriptures. 

But  language  to  do  its  full  and  perfect 
work  must  have  the  interpreting  voice. 
No  matter  what  the  preacher's  mental 
gifts  or  written  style  may  be,  if  he  lacks 
the  flexible  and  expressive  voice,  he  goes 
maimed  and  halting  to  his  work.  The 
voice  is  the  most  subtle  and  mysterious 
of  all  the  organs  of  the  soul.  It  seems 
to  be  halfway  between  the  body  and  the 
spirit,  and  to  be  the  product  and  also  the 


132  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

servant  of  them  both.  The  voice  of 
the  preacher  should  be  clear  and  flexible, 
taking  color  easily  and  making  mental 
and  emotional  valuations  with  rapidity 
and  precision.  Many  a  preacher  does 
not  exert  upon  his  congregation  more 
than  a  fraction  of  his  power,  because  he 
stands  behind  a  stiff  and  unsympathizing 
voice.  If  the  man's  words  say  one  thing 
and  his  voice  says  another,  if  with  his  lan- 
guage he  appeals  and  with  his  tones  he 
repels,  he  is  working  at  cross  purposes, 
and  much  of  his  energy  is  thrown  away. 
If  the  sermon  is  a  heart-to-heart  talk  of 
the  preacher  with  his  people,  then  it  is 
desirable  that  his  heart  should  throb 
and  pulsate  in  his  tones.  Vocal  culture, 
therefore,  is  an  art  which  no  student 
for  the  ministry  should  thoughtlessly 
pass  by. 

But  vocal  culture,  however  important, 
has  long  been  in  disrepute.  Elocution  is 
considered  even  by  many  intelligent  and 
well-informed    people  as    something    me- 


Form  and  Manner  133 

chanical  and  superficial,  a  sort  of  pastime 
for  young  ladies,  but  nothing  serious 
enough  to  deserve  a  place  in  the  cur- 
riculum of  earnest-hearted  men.  This 
prejudice  has  held  sway  in  many  of  our 
seminaries,  the  result  being  that  the 
teacher  of  elocution  has  been  usually 
the  poorest-paid  member  of  the  faculty, 
or  has  been  merely  a  visiting  instructor 
with  no  official  standing  whatever.  And 
there  is  a  reason  for  all  this.  Too  often 
the  teachers  of  elocution  have  been  shal- 
low and  uneducated  men,  teaching  in  a 
mechanical  way,  and  running  their  pupils 
into  a  common  mold,  so  that  all  the  mem- 
bers of  the  same  school  have  come  out 
with  similar  tones  and  gestures,  every 
pupil  thus  being  spoiled.  Moreover,  a 
little  knowledge  is  a  dangerous  thing, 
and  in  no  department  of  human  learning 
is  this  so  true  as  in  the  science  and  art 
of  elocution.  A  little  elocution  is  indeed 
ridiculous.  A  man  who  studies  voice  and 
gesture  just  long  enough  to  be  conscious 


134  ^-^^^  Minister  as  Prophet 

of  them  cuts  a  sorry  figure  when  he  comes 
before  the  people. 

Elocution  is  a  curse  unless  studied 
so  long  and  patiently  that  all  its  scaf- 
folding disappears,  and  there  is  left  no 
trace  of  the  various  processes  by  which 
the  voice  has  been  redeemed.  But  voice 
culture  in  itself  is  one  of  the  noblest 
and  finest  of  the  arts,  and  there  is  no 
reason  why  men  should  not  learn  how  to 
speak  as  well  as  women  learn  how  to  sing. 
One  does  not  speak  well  naturally  any 
more  than  one  sings  well  by  nature,  and 
unless  a  minister  studies  the  art  of  tone 
production,  he  is  almost  certain  to  suffer 
for  his  neglect.  The  teacher  of  elocution 
should  be  one  of  the  ablest  of  men,  and 
his  salary  should  be  not  a  whit  less  than 
the  highest. 

It  takes  a  great  man  to  be  a  safe 
teacher  of  the  voice.  He  must  know 
not  only  the  voice,  but  the  body  and 
also  the  mind  and  also  the  heart.  In 
voice  production  the  whole  being,  body. 


Form  and  Manner  135 

soul,  and  spirit,  is  implicated,  and  the 
teacher  who  would  instruct  men  in  the 
art  of  speaking  must  know  human  nature 
through  the  entire  gamut  of  its  capacities 
and  powers.  His  chief  work  is  that  of 
liberation.  He  must  set  the  captive  free. 
It  is  often  said  that  preachers  should 
speak  naturally;  but  ah,  there's  the  rub! 
Not  one  man  in  ten  speaks  naturally 
unless  he  has  been  trained.  Men  are 
all  bound  round  and  tied  up  with  bad 
habits,  and  the  teacher  of  elocution  must 
untie  the  knots.  The  mental  excitement 
caused  by  appearing  before  an  audience 
leads  men  to  do  all  sorts  of  curious  and 
unnatural  things  with  the  muscles  of  the 
arms  and  throat,  and  simply  to  be  himself 
a  man  needs  a  competent  instructor. 

Indeed,  that  is  about  all  the  voice  teacher 
has  to  do.  It  is  not  for  him  to  dictate  to 
his  students  where  they  shall  place  their 
emphasis  or  when  they  shall  make  their 
gestures.  His  work  is  to  set  all  the 
muscles  free  that  the  soul  may  be  at  lib- 


136  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

erty  to  do  unimpeded  what  it  will.  The 
hand  must  be  set  free  so  that  the  fingers 
shall  not  be  tied,  and  the  arms  must  be 
freed  that  gestures  may  not  proceed  from 
the  elbow,  and  the  lower  jaw  must  be 
liberated  that  the  tones  may  not  be 
squeezed,  and  the  constrictions  must  all 
be  taken  from  the  throat  that  the  voice 
may  not  be  cramped,  and  the  muscles  of 
the  back  must  be  relaxed  that  the  tones 
may  not  lack  sweetness,  volume,  and  depth, 
and  all  the  muscles  of  the  chest  must  be 
trained  that  the  tones  may  not  be  breathy ; 
in  short,  there  is  scarcely  a  muscle  in  the 
body  which  may  not  help  or  mar  the  voice, 
and  the  teacher  of  vocal  culture,  stripping 
off  all  these  fetters,  says  to  the  prisoner, 
"Come  forth."  An  elocution  teacher  who 
understands  his  business  is  one  of  the  best 
friends  a  student  of  theology  can  have. 

That  there  is  not  in  every  theological 
seminary  of  America  a  competent  and 
well-paid  professor  of  voice  culture  is  a 
scandal  for  which  we  ought  to  hang  our 


Form  and  Manner  137 

heads  in  shame.  When  one  thinks  of  the 
hundreds  of  preachers  who  are  all  the 
time  troubled  with  their  throats,  and  of 
the  scores  who  break  down  altogether, 
and  of  the  long-suffering  congregations 
listening  to  uncultivated  voices  of  men 
upon  whose  tongue  the  Gospel  becomes  a 
nasal  or  a  rasping  thing,  irritating  where 
it  ought  to  soothe,  and  wounding  where 
it  ought  to  heal,  one  feels  like  hurling 
thunderbolts  of  wrath  against  the  system 
of  theological  training  by  which  this  awful 
tragedy  is  made  possible  to  this  present 
hour. 

A  few  words  of  counsel  are  all  that  can 
be  given :  — 

I.  Never  put  on  a  tone.  Let  every 
tone  be  sincere.  Every  affectation  in  the 
pulpit  subtracts  from  the  preacher's 
power.  If  you  use  an  oily  tone,  or  a  sanc- 
timonious tone,  or  a  whining  tone,  or  a 
graveyard  tone,  you  are  making  yourself 
unnatural  and  closing  the  hearts  of  your 
hearers  against  you. 


138  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

2.  Avoid  the  devil  of  monotony.  Its 
name  is  legion.  There  is  a  monotony  of 
rate  and  one  of  pitch  and  one  of  em- 
phasis and  one  of  force  and  one  of  accent 
and  one  of  cadence,  and  not  one  of  the 
unhallowed  brood  will  come  out  even  by 
prayer  and  fasting.  Nothing  but  a  teacher 
will  answer  in  dealing  with  diseases  of  the 
voice.  The  reason  is  that  for  the  voice 
there  is  no  looking-glass,  and  no  man  can 
safely  trust  his  ear.  The  most  terrible 
and  patent  defects  will  escape  the  keenest 
man  alive  until  they  are  pointed  out  by  an 
acute-eared  teacher. 

3.  Do  not  overdo.  Delsarte  never  said 
a  brighter  thing  than  this,  "  Mediocrity  is 
not  the  too  little,  but  the  too  much."  It  is 
one  of  those  profound  sayings  which  be- 
come the  better  appreciated  the  longer 
they  are  pondered.  All  second-rate  sing- 
ers overdo.  They  make  too  great  an 
effort.  They  squirm  and  twist  and  make 
wry  faces,  and  give  the  impression  that 
singing    is    a    tremendous    feat.      Grea^ 


Form  and  Manner  139 

singers  sing  with  consummate  ease.  Sec- 
ond and  third-rate  actors  always  overdo. 
They  put  on  too  much.  We  call  them 
stagey  and  theatrical,  and  pass  them  by, 
while  we  give  our  attention  to  the  star, 
who,  if  he  is  of  the  first  magnitude,  is  so 
natural  we  feel  we  could  act  that  well 
ourself. 

Second-rate  preachers  always  overdo. 
They  use  too  many  adjectives,  too  many 
gestures,  too  many  ideas,  too  much 
force.  They  pound  the  pulpit,  and  this 
invariably  pushes  the  people  farther  off. 
You  cannot  pound  an  idea  into  the  hu- 
man mind.  An  idea  is  a  flower.  You 
can  shake  its  perfume  on  the  air,  but  that 
requires  no  bluster.  An  idea  is  a  jewel. 
You  can  twirl  it  before  your  congregation, 
that  the  light  of  every  facet  may  fall  upon 
the  eye,  but  that  requires  no  muscle. 
Even  if  you  count  an  idea  a  projectile, 
which  is  to  be  fired  into  the  substance  of 
the  soul,  even  then  it  is  possible  to  use  too 
much  force.     When  they  first  made  the 


140  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

great  projectiles  with  which  to  sink  a 
battleship,  they  tipped  them  with  the 
hardest  steel,  and  found  that  by  the  im- 
pact the  projectile  was  shattered  to  pieces. 
It  was  later  on  discovered  that  by  tipping 
them  with  softer  metal  the  projectiles  had 
greater  penetrating  power,  and,  instead  of 
breaking  into  pieces,  plowed  deep  into 
the  plates  of  solid  steel.  If  you  want  to 
get  a  great  truth  deep  into  the  human 
heart,  then  tip  it  with  a  gentle  tone. 

4.  Be  sensible.  Remember  that  a  con- 
gregation is  nothing  but  a  man.  It  is  not 
a  colossus  to  be  attacked  by  rhetorical 
bludgeons,  or  a  baby  to  be  tickled  by 
vocal  pyrotechnics,  or  a  monster  to  be 
tricked  and  trapped  by  oratorical  strata- 
gems and  devices.  To  speak  to  a  man, 
you  must  be  one  yourself.  Never  en- 
deavor to  be  eloquent.  It  may  be  that 
God  will  let  you  be  eloquent  a  half  dozen 
times  in  your  life,  but  I  am  sure  you  can- 
not be  eloquent  if  you  try  to  be.  And 
never    declaim.      Declamation    makes    a 


Form  and  Manner  141 

noise  and  interests  the  children,  but 
grown-up  people  care  nothing  for  it. 
There  is  nothing  more  monotonous  than 
steady  declamation,  unless  it  be  continu- 
ous eloquence.  And  do  not  struggle  to 
make  an  impression.  If  you  do,  you  will 
not  make  the  kind  of  impression  that  you 
want  to  make.  And  when  the  sermon  is 
over,  never  run  round  and  ask  what  sort 
of  an  impression  the  sermon  made.  Only 
an  imbecile  would  be  excusable  for  asking 
a  question  so  unutterably  silly.  And  when 
you  go  to  bed,  do  not  lie  awake  and  worry 
about  the  impression  that  you  made  or  did 
not  make. 

A  man  must  speak  his  message,  tak- 
ing care  that  it  be  clear  and  true,  and 
then  leave  all  the  impressions  in  the 
hand  of  God.  The  fact  is,  no  preacher 
knows  what  impressions  are  the  deepest 
or  just  when  or  where  they  are  made.  In 
walking  through  the  woods  after  a  storm, 
we  hear  the  creaking  of  a  broken  branch, 
and  by  and  by,  with   terrific   thunder,  it 


142  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

comes  crashing  down  across  the  path.  It 
startles  us,  but  we  do  not  bring  it  home. 
But  on  our  return  we  discover  a  bur  stick- 
ing to  our  garment.  When  and  where  we 
got  it  we  do  not  know.  We  passed  it,  we 
touched  it,  it  clung  to  us,  it  seized  us  with- 
out hurrah  and  clamor,  and  unknowingly 
we  brought  it  home.  So  it  is  with  truth. 
The  sermons  that  rattle  and  thunder  are 
not  the  sermons  that  stay  with  us  longest. 
They  startle  and  they  excite  a  momentary 
wonder,  but  we  do  not  bring  them  home. 
The  truths  which  we  are  carrying  with  us  to 
our  eternal  home  are  truths  which  we  have 
passed  near  at  some  point  or  other  along 
our  earthly  pilgrimage,  and  they,  touching 
us,  have  stuck  to  us ;  and  because  the  spirit 
of  God  is  in  them,  they  keep  clinging  to 
us  and  we  to  them,  although  we  cannot 
tell  just  how  or  when  or  why  they  and  we 
first  came  together.  Scatter  God's  truths 
through  your  congregation,  and  rest  as- 
sured that  some  one  will  carry  one  of  them 
home! 


Form  and  Manner  143 

5.  Be  yourself.  You  are  strong  only 
when  you  are  yourself.  You  are  per- 
suasive only  when  you  speak  in  your 
mother  tongue,  and  of  those  things  which 
you  yourself  do  know.  If  you  walk  on 
the  stilts  of  other  men's  high  phrases,  or 
wrap  yourself  in  the  embroidered  language 
of  men  of  genius  long  since  dead,  you 
will  be  as  impotent  as  David  was  the 
day  he  fitted  on  Saul's  armor.  Use  the 
pebble  taken  from  the  brook  which  flows 
by  your  door.  Use  the  sling  which  you 
have  used  from  boyhood  and  which  be- 
longs to  you  by  the  will  of  God.  Let 
other  men  preach  as  they  will,  you  preach 
as  you  must.  True  to  yourself,  speaking 
as  you  are  led,  the  Gospel  on  your  lips 
will  have  an  accent  which  it  has  never 
had  before  since  the  world  began,  —  an 
accent  needed  to  fill  out  the  music  of 
the  full-toned  proclamation  of  the  good 
news  of  God. 

6.  Be  natural.  This  is  the  sum  of  the 
whole   matter.      Do   not   push   the   voice 


144  ^'^^^  Minister  as  Prophet 

into  clerical  cadences,  but  let  it  flow  out 
of  an  open  throat,  breaking  into  syllables 
which  tell  truly  what  you  think  and  feel. 
Do  not  push  the  language  into  inflated 
and  bombastic  forms,  but  let  it  flow  as 
naturally  as  a  brook  through  one  of  God's 
own  green  meadows.  Do  not  shove  the 
thought  into  artificial  altitudes,  but  let 
it  move  along  the  level  on  which  you 
do  your  ordinary  thinking.  If  you  are 
altogether  natural,  you  will  become  invis- 
ible. Style  is  perfect  when  it  cannot  be 
seen.  Jesus  was  a  perfect  speaker.  There 
is  no  recorded  criticism  of  his  style.  Men 
would  have  criticised  it  had  they  seen 
it,  but  they  never  saw  it.  They  saw 
nothing  but  his  thought.  Some  men 
saw  it,  and  their  souls  were  filled  with 
rapture.  Others  saw  it,  and  they  were 
stung  to  madness  and  fiery  indignation. 
Men  simmered  and  sizzled  as  he  spoke, 
muttering  to  themselves,  talking  to  one 
another,  crying  out  by  way  of  approba- 
tion or  condemnation.     Every  one  boiled 


Form  and  Manner  145 

over,  some  with  love,  and  some  with  hate, 
so  mighty  was  his  speaking.  He  is  the 
model  for  us  all.  A  preacher  really  great 
speaks  the  Gospel  so  simply  and  so  truly 
that  all  the  congregation,  looking  tov/ard 
him,  see  no  man  but  Jesus  only. 


^V^ 


The  Place  of  Dogma  in  Preaching 

The  phrasing  of  my  subject  seems  to 
take  it  for  granted  that  there  is  a  place 
for  dogma  in  preaching.  This,  I  know, 
is  rather  a  hazardous  assumption,  for 
there  are  men  in  large  numbers,  intelli- 
gent and  influential  and  Christian,  who  be- 
lieve that  there  is  no  place  whatever  for 
dogma  in  the  Christian  religion.  Chris- 
tianity, they  say,  is  a  matter  of  feeling, 
a  thing  of  the  spirit;  the  bond  of  union 
is  sentiment,  not  thought,  and  as  soon  as 
you  introduce  dogma  you  give  occasion 
for  differences  and  contentions  and  bitter- 
ness of  heart.  These  men  carry  us  down 
the  centuries  and  show  us  how  generation 
after  generation  has  been  teased  and 
fretted  into  ugliness  and  torn  into  fac- 
146 


The  Place  of  Dogma  in  Preaching     147 

tional  shreds  by  the  everlasting  disputa- 
tion concerning  dogma,  and  turning  their 
back  upon  it,  they  shun  it  as  the  black 
beast  of  Christian  history.  These,  of 
course,  are  extremists. 

There  are  others  who  are  ready  to  ac- 
knowledge that  there  is  a  place  for 
dogma ;  it  belongs  to  the  study  of  the 
theologian,  the  den  of  the  philosopher, 
the  schoolroom  where  professor  and  stu- 
dent meet,  the  library  of  the  minister ; 
but  it  has  no  place  in  the  pulpit  toward 
which  worn  and  wearied  mortals  look  on 
Sunday  morning  for  a  guiding  and  a  heal- 
ing word  amid  the  temptations  and  tribu- 
lations of  the  crowded  and  bewildering 
days. 

The  time  has  come  when  dogma  is 
everywhere  spoken  against.  Do  not  the 
novelists  go  out  of  their  way  to  sneer  at  it } 
Some  of  their  brightest  things  are  said 
in  disparagement  of  it.  Magazine  writers 
toss  it  aside  with  a  superior  smile  as  though 
it  belonged  to  the  pile  of  exploded  super- 


148  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

stitions.  The  editors  and  reporters  tear 
the  doctrines  and  creeds  into  tatters  and 
twit  the  minister  on  the  fact  that  the  world 
is  interested  no  longer  in  his  dogmas. 
Lords  and  ladies  of  high  society  say  with 
supercilious  disdain  that  they  care  nothing 
at  all  for  the  "  dogmas "  of  the  church. 
The  unbelievers  and  freethinkers  grow 
furious  in  the  presence  of  these  dogmas 
and  pour  out  upon  them  the  vials  of  their 
wrath,  trampling  them  beneath  their  feet 
as  the  muddy  sediment  of  a  stream  of 
superstition,  black  crystals  of  bigotry  and 
hate.  Tennyson  has  sketched  the  typical 
man  of  to-day  in  his  lines :  — 

"  I  take  possession  of  man's  mind  and  deed ; 
I  care  not  what  the  sects  may  brawl ; 
I  sit  as  God  holding  no  form  of  creed, 
But  contemplating  all." 

Now  there  is  nothing  new  in  the   fact 

that  the    world    is    opposed    to   Christian 

dogma,    for   it  has  been  so  from  the   be- 

,  ginning.     Ever    since    the   days   of    Saul 

of   Tarsus   the   dogmas    of   the  Christian 


The  Place  of  Dogma  in  Preaching     149 

church  have  seemed  to  one  type  of  men 
a  stumbling-block  and  to  another  type 
of  men  they  have  been  sheer  foolish- 
ness. The  novel  feature  of  the  present 
situation  is  that  the  disparagement  of 
dogma  has  been  taken  up  by  members 
of  the  Christian  church.  Christian  authors 
of  Christian  volumes  speak  contemptu- 
ously of  creeds.  The  president  of  a  well- 
known  college  begins  a  book  with  the 
assertion  that  the  current  creed  of  Chris- 
tendom is  a  chaos  of  contradictions. 
Christian  editors  of  Christian  papers  do 
not  hesitate  to  speak  of  doctrines  as  though 
they  were  matters  of  slight  concern.  Chris- 
tian men  and  Christian  women  and  Chris- 
tian scholars  say  openly  that  they  do  not 
care  for  doctrinal  preaching,  and  with  the 
crowd  they  shout,  "Away  with  your 
dogmas !  "  Here  and  there  you  will  find 
a  preacher  who,  yielding  to  the  Zeitgeist, 
falls  in  with  the  prevailing  fad  and  rails 
against  dogma  too.  Dogma  is  "  a, monster 
of  such  frightful  mien,  as  to  be  hated  needs 


150  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

but  to  be  seen."  Some  men  cannot  even 
pronounce  the  word  without  an  ictus  that 
is  acid. 

Certainly  such  a  world-wide  movement 
demands  careful  consideration.  No  such 
fashion  would  ever  have  taken  hold  of 
the  hearts  of  men  had  there  not  been 
powerful  reasons.  Why  is  it  that  there  is 
a  tendency  nowadays  to  depreciate  the 
value  of  dogma  .'* 

I.  We  are  living  in  a  new  world.  The 
world  has  been  recreated  within  seventy- 
five  years.  There  is  a  new  atmosphere,  a 
new  temper,  a  new  perspective,  a  new 
viewpoint,  a  new  emphasis,  new  instru- 
ments, new  apparatus ;  all  the  old  horizons 
of  knowledge  have  disappeared,  new  worlds 
have  swum  into  our  ken,  and  a  desolat- 
ing humility  has  fallen  on  a  large  section 
of  the  Christian  world.  Our  fathers  lived 
in  a  much  smaller  world  than  ours. 
They  could  close  every  sentence  with  a 
period;  we  are  obHged  to  use  the  inter- 
rogation  point.      For   a   generation   min- 


The  Place  of  Dogma  in  Preaching     151 

isters  have  been  repeating  in  the  pul- 
pit:— 

"  Our  little  systems  have  their  day, 

They  have  their  day  and  cease  to  be, 
They  are  but  broken  lights  of  Thee, 
And  thou,  O  Lord,  art  more  than  they. 

"  We  have  but  faith,  we  cannot  know, 
For  knowledge  is  of  things  we  see. 
And  yet  we  trust  it  comes  from  Thee, 
A  beam  in  darkness,  let  it  grow." 

This  has  been  the  sentiment  of  some  of 
the  boldest  spirits,  while  many  more  in- 
tense and  more  earnest  have  been  driven 

to  exclaim :  — 

"What  am  I? 

An  infant  crying  in  the  night  — 
An  infant  crying  for  the  light  — 
And  with  no  language  but  a  cry." 

In  the  presence  of  the  immeasurable 
spaces  and  the  illimitable  forces  which 
modern  science  has  disclosed,  many  a 
heroic  spirit  has  prostrated  itself  in  the 
dust,  saying,  in  answer  to  all  the  questions 
which  religion  suggests  :  "  I  do  not  know  ! 
I  do  not  know !  "  In  an  age  so  largely 
ruled  by  the  agnostic  spirit,  it  seems  out 


152  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

of  place  to  be  dogmatic.  Who  can  be  cer- 
tain in  a  world  where  so  many  men  are 
doubtful  ?  Dogma  seems  to  be  an  anach- 
ronism in  our  modern  life.  It  is  a  mark 
of  culture  to  speak  in  hesitant  and  apolo- 
getic phrases.  With  men  all  around  us  all 
at  sea  it  becomes  us  to  hold  our  opinions 
also  in  suspense.  To  be  certain  or  to 
know  is  to  get  ourself  written  down  a 
prig. 

2.  With  the  new  world  have  come  new 
problems,  and  these  problems  seem  to  be 
beyond  the  reach  of  dogma.  Steam  and 
electricity  have  created  a  new  industrial 
world.  Populations  are  massing  them- 
selves more  and  more  in  colossal  cities. 
All  our  social  problems  have  been  multi- 
plied enormously.  How  to  live  together 
—  this  is  the  problem  of  our  day.  In  the 
rush  and  push  and  strife  of  modern  city 
life  there  is  so  much  injustice,  so  much 
dishonesty,  so  much  cruelty,  so  much 
suffering;  lust  and  drunkenness  and 
greed  create  such  terrible  tragedies  that 


The  Place  of  Dogma  in  Preaching     153 

religious  men  are  saying,  "  We  must 
grapple  with  these  awful  problems ;  we 
must  front  these  pressing  perils  and  let 
the  dogmas  go."  And  so  men  are  build- 
ing institutional  churches  and  parish 
houses  and  college  settlements,  and  phil- 
anthropic agencies  are  multiplied  and 
extended.  Every  one  nowadays  believes 
in  institutions  which  deal  directly  with  the 
social  wants  and  needs  of  men.  Money 
is  being  poured  out  like  water  to  feed 
the  hungry,  to  clothe  the  naked,  and  to 
teach  the  fingers  of  the  ignorant  ways  of 
earning  bread,  and  to  this  grand  work 
many  a  man  goes  jauntily  forward,  say- 
ing, "  I  believe  in  social  service ;  let  the 
dogmas  go." 

3.  The  new  age  is  irenic.  The  past 
has  been  filled  with  controversy  and  con- 
tention, with  bitterness  and  war.  When 
we  read  the  awful  record  the  head  grows 
faint  and  the  heart  sick.  The  spirit  of 
our  times  cries  out :  Let  us  have  peace. 
Let    us    forget    the   points  on  which  we 


^ 


154  ^^  Minister  as  Prophet 

differ  and  think  only  on  the  points  in 
which  we  all  agree.  Let  all  the  evangel- 
ical churches  come  together  and  let  the 
Unitarians  come  in  too,  and  let  the  Jews 
come  in  also,  and  let  us  receive  also  the 
disciples  of  ethical  culture  —  let  us  throw 
away  the  dogmas  on  which  we  differ,  and 
let  us  think  henceforth  and  forever  only 
of  the  things  on  which  we  can  agree. 
This  means,  of  course,  throwing  over- 
board the  distinctive  dogmas  of  the 
Christian  religion  —  but  let  them  go,  if 
only  by  casting  them  away  we  can  have 
peace.  Our  good  nature  extends  even  to 
the  ends  of  the  earth.  We  are  no  longer 
the  critics  of  the  Oriental  rehgions.  We 
are  willing  to  admit  that  Confucianism 
and  Buddhism  and  Mohammedanism  and 
Shintoism  are  all  earnest  strivings  of  the 
human  spirit  after  God ;  that  they  all 
have  in  them  many  beautiful  and  noble 
sentiments  and  precepts,  and  why  should 
not  the  followers  of  all  the  religions  of  the 
earth  get  together  and  sit  at  one  another's 


The  Place  of  Dogma  in  Preaching     155 

feet,  culling  out  the  things  upon  which 
they  are  all  agreed,  and  out  of  these 
constructing  the  one  universal  and  final 
religioixi—^his  means,  of  course,  letting 

e  distinctive  dogmas  of  the  Christian 
religion  go  —  but  why  not  let  them  go 
if  we  can  have  a  world-wide  peace  ?  So 
many  men  are  saying. 

4.  The  value  of  dogma  as  a  dynamic 
is  becoming  increasingly  doubtful.  Ralph 
Waldo  Emerson  threw  over  the  dogmas 
of  the  church  one  after  the  other,  but  he 
remained  a  saint  to  the  end  of  his  days. 
One  of  the  most  orthodox  of  all  evangel- 
ical preachers.  Father  Taylor,  declared 
that  he  had  never  known  so  good  a 
Christian  as  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson.  If 
Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  could  get  on  with- 
out dogma,  why  should  not  all  men  be 
able  to  do  the  same  ?  Only  recently  a 
writer  stated  in  the  Independent  that 
decadence  in  church  attendance  causes 
no  decadence  in  morals,  that  many  of  the 
best  people  she  knows  no  longer  care  to 


156  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

go  to  church ;  and  in  order  to  prove  her 
contention  she  cited  the  fact  that  the 
leader  of  the  reform  movement  in  New 
York  City  never  goes  to  church.  Christ- 
mas morning  of  last  year  an  editorial 
writer  in  one  of  the  New  York  dailies 
said  that  while  the  incarnation  to  many 
minds  had  passed  from  the  realm  of  faith 
to  the  region  of  poetic  imagination,  never- 
theless the  idealism  of  Christmas  remains. 
The  fact  that  the  Christian  spirit  seems 
to  abide  after  the  Christian  dogmas  have 
been  denied  is  leading  increasing  numbers 
of  people  to  feel  that  we  can  safely 
dispense  with  the  dogmatic  features  of 
Christianity,  keeping  only  its  beautiful 
spirit. 

To  many  minds  the  virgin  birth  is 
passing  from  the  realm  of  dogma  to  the 
realm  of  fancy  —  let  it  pass,  —  it  is  a 
lovely  picture  and  has  done  the  world  im- 
measurable good.  The  miracles  of  Jesus 
are  passing  from  the  realm  of  fact  to 
the  realm  of   myth,  but  let  them  pass,  — 


The  Place  of  Dogma  in  Preaching     157 

they  have  done  the  v^orld  a  service.  The 
resurrection  of  Jesus  is  passing  from  the 
realm  of  history  to  the  realm  of  halluci- 
nation, but  let  it  pass,  —  it  has  helped  men 
to  believe  that  all  men  rise.  The  incar- 
nation is  passing  from  the  realm  of  faith 
to  the  realm  of  imagination  —  but  let  it 
go,  —  we  should  praise  the  men  who  were 
able  to  entertain  so  poetic  an  idea.  And 
so  men  are  throwing  away  the  virgin  birth, 
the  miracles,  the  resurrection,  the  trin-  \ 
ity,  the  incarnation,  redemption  through 
Christ's  blood,  the  new  birth,  heaven, 
hell,  and  saying,  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  is  enough.  Others,  bolder  still, 
say  the  Golden  Rule  is  sufficient  —  give 
us  this  and  we  have  all  we  need. 
£  -^  5.  J[ri^.our ^crowded  city  life  there  seems 
to  be  nojtime^r^  place  fordogma.  A  city 
picks  up  a  man  Monday  morning,  drives 
him  like  a  slave  through  the  week,  throws 
him  into  Sunday  jaded  and  wrecked.  If 
the  man  can  get  away  from  his  work  at 
night,  he  goes  to  some  banquet  and  listens 


If 


158  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

to  speeches  that  are  facetious  and  witty. 
On  Sunday  he  is  so  jaded  and  fagged  that 
he  says,  Give  me  a  Httle  good  music,  and 
for  heaven's  sake  make  the  sermon  short. 
In  many  cases  the  good-natured  preacher 
obeys,  and  the  Christians  of  our  large 
cities  are  not  getting  the  instruction  which 
their  fathers  received.  The  children  in 
many  cases  grow  up  to  be  ignorant  of  the 
creed  of  the  church,  and  when  they  go  to 
college  are  discovered  to  be  as  ignorant  of 
the  scriptures  as  though  they  were  Hotten- 
tots. Men  and  women  nourished  in  ortho- 
dox households  are  ready  to  be  swept 
along  by  Dowieism,  esoteric  Buddhism, 
Christian  Science,  or  any  other  insanity 
or  delusiop  of  tlic  hour.  It  was  noted 
by  many  that  the  man  whose  name  stood 
at  the  head  of  the  list  of  the  supporters 
of  the  beautiful  new  Christian  Science 
Church  on  Central  Park  West  was  the 
son  of  one  of  the  most  illustrious  of 
the  Presbyterian  families  of  that  city. 
The  false  Christs  of  our  day  get  their 


Q 


The  Place  of  Dogma  in  Preaching     159 

devotees,  not  from  the  world,  but  fromtj  V' 
the  churches  of  evangelical  Christendom. 
Possibly  there  never  has  been  a  time 
when  there  have  been  so  many  and  such 
subtle  temptations  to  reduce  the  Chris- 
tian religion  to  an  ethical  code.  Never 
have  there  been  so  many  reverent  and 
distinguished  and  religious  men  wilUng 
to  do  that  as  just  now.  Give  us  the 
surface  facts.  Give  us  a  quick  lunch, 
cries  the  pew,  and  the  pulpit  with  alacrity 
obeys. 

I  ask  you  to  look  at  two  facts. 
The  first  fact  is  that  through  a  larger 
part  of  the  Christian  world  there  is  a 
spiritual  deadness  which  is  appalHng. 
Our  English  brethren  when  they  visit 
us  go  home  and  talk  about  us,  and  this  is 
what  they  say  about  American  preachers. 
They  say  we  are  a  very  bright  and  learned 
set,  we  are  intensely  intellectual,  we  know 
a  lot  of  things,  but  we  are  not  spiritual,  — 
we  are  lacking  in  spiritual  passion.  If  we 
are  to  believe  what  we  read  in  the  papers, 


i6o  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

certainly  the  churches  of  America  are 
lacking  in  enthusiasm  and  fervor.  The 
motions  are  still  gone  through  with,  but 
the  fires  of  enthusiasm  have  died  down. 
A  few  hopeful  souls  still  tell  us  there  is 
to  be  a  revival,  but  the  revival  has  not 
yet  arrived.  Masses  of  our  population 
have  drifted  out  of  reach  of  the  church. 
Those  who  attend  religious  services  are 
allowing  their  church-going  to  become  in- 
creasingly desultory  and  spasmodic.  No 
one  who  'knows  the  world  as  it  is  to- 
day in  its  temper  and  its  inmost  spirit 
can  deny  that  it  is  skeptical  and  cold, 
either  altogether  indifferent  to  or  furi- 
ously antagonistic  to  the  dogmas  of  the 
Christian  faith.  Our  first  fact,  then,  is 
a  wide-spread  spiritual  desolation.  We 
publish  beautiful  and  elaborate  social  pro- 
grams, but  for  some  reason  we  cannot 
carry  them  out.  We  have  ink,  but  lack 
power. 
a\  The  second  fact  is  a  decadence  in  doc- 
jtrinal  preaching.     I  suppose  the  fact  that 


The  Place  of  Dog^na  in  Preaching     i6i 

there  has  been  such  decadence  would 
hardly  be  denied  by  any  one.  Surely 
the  dogmas  of  the  Christian  church  are 
not  presented  to  the  people  with  anything 
like  the  clearness,  the  coherency,  or  the 
passion  with  which  they  were  presented 
to  people  fifty  years  ago.  In  many  a 
Christian  pulpit  the  dogmas  have  been 
slowly  disappearing.  Occasionally  a  man 
stands  up  and  boldly  says :  **  We  leave 
the  cross  behind  us,  but  let  us  guard  the 
sacred  fire ;  we  cast  off  dogma,  but  we 
keep  enthusiasm.  Let  the  old  statements 
go.  The  incarnation — let  it  be  not  special 
but  general,  all  men  are  begotten  of  God. 
Redemption  —  let  it  be  merged  in  the 
thought  of  continuous  creation.  The 
atonement  —  let  us  make  it  a  universal 
law."  Such  a  man  gets  into  the  papers, 
creates  a  wide-spread  commotion,  goes  up 
like  a  rocket,  and  comes  down  like  a  stick. 
That  is  not  the  kind  of  heretic  of  whom 
we  need  be  afraid  in  our  day  and  genera- 
tion.    The  insidious  heretic  of  our  day  is 


1 62  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

che  man  who  quietly  drops  dogma  out  of 
his  preaching  and  says  nothing  about  it. 
Robert  Louis  Stevenson  was  right  when 
be  said  that  the  damning  sins  are  the  sins 
of  omission.  That  is  what  Jesus  himself 
said. 

And  however  it  may  be  with  other 
men,  surely  the  damning  sins  of  preachers 
are  the  sins  of  omission.  It  is  not  the 
things  which  a  minister  does,  but  the 
things  which  he  does  not  do  which  carry 
him  to  perdition.  A  minister  in  our  day 
can  get  on  very  well  without  dogma. 
Books  are  numerous  and  cheap,  and  he 
has  a  mass  of  poetry  and  a  mass  of  fic- 
tion and  a  mass  of  science  and  a  mass  of 
sociology  from  which  it  is  possible  for  him 
to  draw.  He  can  give  his  serm.on  the 
Cliristian  atmosphere  and  let  a  stream 
of  Christian  sentiment  trickle  through  its 
paragraphs  and  keep  to  the  front  the 
Christian  ethical  ideals,  without  even  so 
much  as  once  referring  to  those  funda- 
mental dogmas  by  which   the   church   of 


The  Place  of  Dogma  in  Preaching     163 

God  lifted  the  Roman  Empire  off  its 
hinges,  and  turned  the  stream  of  the 
centuries  into  a  new  channel.  There  is 
a  vast  mass  of  preaching  which  is  not 
dogmatic.  These,  then,  are  the  two  facts  : 
There  is  wide-spread  spiritual  desolation 
and  wide-spread  indifference  to  dogma. 
Is  there  a  connection  between  these  two 
facts?     I  think  there  is. 

And  soj^ stand  here  tCLjenter_a  plea  for 
dogma  in  preaching.  There  is  a  place  for 
it,  and  _its_p2,acj_  is  _ the.  jprern ost.  4)Jace. 
The  man  who  would  be  a  great  preacher 
is  the  man  who  keeps  dogma  at  the  front. 

I .  Let  _us  ask  ojLrselves  first,  of  all 
what  docfma  is.     We  cannot  do  better  than 


to  accept  the  definition  of  Dr.  James  Orr, 
and  say  that  dogmxa  is  doctrine  £learly  ^ 
Stated  and  ecclesiastically  sanctioned.  It 
this  be  a  correct  definition,  then  certainly 
everybody  must  beheve  in  Dogma.  Sa- 
battier  is  right  when  he  says  that  a  religion 
without  doctrine  is  a  thing  essentially  con- 
tradictory.    And  Harnack  is  not  mistaken 


164  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

when  he  asserts  that  Christianity  without 
dogma,  without  a  clear  expression  of  its 
content,  is  inconceivable.  If  the  intellect 
has  anything  at  all  to  do  with  a  man's  re- 
ligion, if  the  first  great  commandment  is, 
"  Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  with 
all  thy  heart  and  soul  and  mind  and 
strength,"  then  we  must  think  to  be  genu- 
inely religious,  and  our  thought  must  be 
worked  out  to  clearness  and  coherency. 
And  when  thus  worked  out  and  sanctioned 
by  the  body  of  believers,  it  is  Christian 
dogma, 
f  2.  Dogmatic  teaching  has  always  been 
j  a  source  of  power.  No  men  have  ever 
left  their  mark  upon  this  world  who  have 
not  had  a  definite  and  clean-cut  creed. 
Men  often  talk  about  the  scientific  spirit 
who  do  not  know  what  the  scientific  spirit 
is.  Science  is  as  dogmatic  as  the  church 
was  in  the  mediaeval  ages.  Science  has 
her  creed,  and  its  articles  are  clear  and 
definite.  The  universality  of  law,  the  uni- 
versality of  gravitation,  the  indestructibility 


The  Place  of  Dogma  in  Preaching     165 

of  matter,  the  conservation  of  energy,  or- 
ganic evolution,  the  age  of  ice,  the  undula- 
tory  nature  of  light,  —  these  are  articles  of 
her  creed  which  she  repeats  in  all  her 
temples,  and  which  she  proclaims  as  one 
having  authority.  It  is  because  she  has  a 
creed  and  because  she  speaks  dogmatically 
that  she  has  filled  the  modern  world  with 
her  wonders. 

The  high  priests  of  science  are  all 
of  them  without  exception  dogmatists. 
Tyndall,  Huxley,  Spencer,  and  all  the 
rest  of  them  have  been  as  dogmatic  as 
the  apologists  of  the  second  century  were. 
That  has  been  characteristic  of  all  the 
mightiest  opponents  of  the  Christian 
church.  They  have  all  had  a  creed  and 
been  able  to  meet  the  faith  of  the  Chris- 
tian church  by  clear  and  coherent  dogmas. 
We  are  hving  in  a  scientific  age,  and  men 
demand  above  all  things  else  clearness,  co- 
herency, definiteness.  What  a  tragedy  it 
is  that  when  science  is  speaking  in  such 
clear  and  positive  tones,  so  many  of  the 


1 66  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

preachers  of  the  Gospel  should  be  speaking 
with  hesitant  voices  and  blowing  the  bugle 
with  a  sound  so  uncertain  that  men  do  not 
know  whether  or  not  to  prepare  for  battle. 
'""  What  the  men  in  our  theological  semina- 
ries need  most  of  all  is  a  thorough  ground- 
ing in  theology.  Men  in  a  scientific  age 
want  science ;  theology  is  the  science  of 
God.  If  some  men  are  not  ashamed  to  give 
their  life  to  the  study  of  the  science  of  the 
stars,  and  others  to  the  study  of  the  science 
of  flowers,  and  others  to  the  science  of 
rocks,  and  others  to  the  science  of  bugs, 
shame  on  the  Lord's  anointed  if  they  are 
ashamed  to  give  themselves  to  the  contin- 
uous and  passionate  study  of  the  science 
of  the  Eternal.  It  is  calamitous  that  in  an 
age  filled  with  vast  confusions  and  multi- 
tudinous speculations  so  many  ministers 
of  the  Gospel  should  be  capable  of  nothing 
but  clouded  phrases  and  declarations  that 
are  lacking  in  the  music  of  final  and  incon- 
trovertible truth.  When  we  are  met  on 
every  side  by  ideas  as  sharp  as  lances  and 


The  Place  of  Dogma  i7i  Preaching     167 

solid   as   spears,  we  cannot  conquer  with 
hands  filled  with  mist  or  with  mush. 

3.  One  of  the  mightiest  forces  of  our 
times  is  socialism.  This  is  a  force  which 
men  have  already  learned  to  fear,  and 
with  which  the  world  is  bound  to  reckon 
by  and  by.  Karl  Marx  was  the  greatest 
dogmatist  which  Germany  has  produced 
within  the  last  hundred  years.  He  had 
ideas  and  he  thought  them  out  to  clear- 
ness, and  he  stated  them  in  language 
which  burns  like  a  thousand  torches,  and 
he  has  kindled  all  over  the  world  fires 
that  are  burning  like  subterranean  fur- 
naces down  deep  in  the  hot  souls  of  men. 
In  the  world  of  socialism  there  are  hero- 
isms and  self-abnegations  and  willingness 
to  suffer,  and  idealisms  which  remind  one 
of  the  days  of  the  apostolic  church.  With 
such  passionate  intensity  of  devotion  and 
such  lofty  dreams  of  the  future  that  shall 
be,  I  do  not  wonder  that  socialism  is 
looked  upon  with  alarm,  and  that  many 
socialists  are  hated  with  the  same  fear  as 


1 68  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

the   followers  of   the   crucified    Nazarene 
were  hated  two  thousand  years  ago. 

4.  One  of  the  colossal  facts  of  Chris- 
tian history  is  Roman  Catholicism.  Her 
victories  are  amazing.  Her  power  is  stu- 
pendous. She  has  retained  her  grip  upon 
the  minds  and  consciences  of  men  through 
the  storms  and  changes  of  more  than  a 
thousand  years,  and  that  grip  is  not  yet 
broken.  She  has  done  it  because  she  has 
been  from  first  to  last  dogmatic.  She  has 
a  few  ideas  which  are  as  clear  as  crystal 
and  which  she  builds  up  in  the  minds  of 
men  by  patient  teaching  through  the 
generations.  One  of  those  dogmas  is  the 
dogma  of  the  church.  The  church  is  a 
divine  institution  intrusted  with  the  right 
to  guide  and  rule  the  hearts  and  homes  of 
men.  The  second  is  the  dogma  of  tran- 
substantiation,  the  dogma  that  God  is 
actually  present  on  the  altar  in  the  sacri- 
fice of  the  mass.  These  two  dogmas  can- 
not be  questioned  by  any  faithful  Catholic 
anywhere  on  the  earth.     They  are  taught 


The  Place  of  Dogma  in  Preaching     169 

in  all  languages,  and  without  a  quiver  in 
the  voice  of  the  instructing  priest ;  and 
because  those  dogmas  are  taught  and 
accepted,  nearly  three  hundred  thousand 
Roman  Catholics  on  the  little  island  of 
Manhattan  travel  to  the  house  of  prayei 
every  Sunday  morning  in  the  early  hours, 
when  Protestants  are  too  tired  to  get  out 
of  bed,  —  over  twice  as  many  as  all  the 
Protestant  church-goers  put  together,  not- 
withstanding the  Protestant  population 
outnumbers  that  of  the  Roman  Catholic. 
And  all  this  is  made  possible  by  the  per- 
sistent, patient,  everlasting  teaching  of 
dogmas. 

Protestantism  in  her  origin  was  also  dog-  { 
matic.     Martin  Luther  was  born  a  Roman  / 
Catholic,   w^as   educated   by   the   Catholic  j 
church,  spent  years  in  a  Roman  Catholic 
monastery.      He  was  not  afraid  of  dogma, 
and  by  means  of  his  dogma  of  justifica- 
tion by  faith,  he  tore  Germany  from  the 
grip  of  the  Pope  and  shook  the  civilized 
world. 


170  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

What  more  dogmatic  preachers  have 
ever  lived  than  the  Presbyterians  of  Scot- 
land and  the  Congregationalists  of  New 
England?  By  this  dogmatic  preaching 
both  countries  were  lifted  to  thrones  of 
power,  and  are  known  in  history  as  seats 
of  the  mighty.  Stalwart  thinkers  of  God's 
truth,  they  did  not  hesitate  to  express  it  in 
language  which  gripped  the  consciences 
of  men.  It  is  the  glory  of  the  Reformed 
branches  of  Protestantism,  and  the  feature 
in  their  life  which  makes  my  heart  rejoice 
is  that  from  the  days  of  John  Calvin  down 
to  the  present  generation  their  leaders 
have  everywhere  and  always  presented  a 
compact  body  of  truth,  which  has  passed 
like  iron  into  the  blood  of  men.  The  doc- 
trine of  divine  sovereignty  thought  out  to 
clearness  and  consistency,  even  though 
overdeveloped  on  one  side  to  the  verge  of 
cruelty,  will  bring  men  nearer  to  God  than 
will  the  idea  of  the  divine  fatherhood  ex- 
pressed in  vague  and  wandering  phrases 
by  minds   which   have   not   thought    out 


The  Place  of  Dogma  in  Preaching     171 

what  divine  parenthood  necessitates  and 
implies. 

The  mightiest  Protestant  church  of  our 
modern  world  is  the  Methodist.  Method- 
ism owes  its  power  to  a  dogma.  It  was  on 
a  certain  evening  in  the  month  of  May,  in 
the  year  1738,  that  John  Wesley,  attend- 
ing a  religious  service  in  London,  while 
listening  to  the  exposition  of  one  of  St. 
Paul's  letters,  felt  his  heart  strangely 
warmed.  The  fire  that  was  kindled  that 
night  in  John  Wesley's  heart  started  a 
spiritual  conflagration  which  put  an  end  to 
the  age  of  ice.  On  both  sides  the  sea  a 
dead  church  was  brought  to  life  again  by 
the  preaching  of  men  whose  lips  had  been 
touched  with  a  coal  from  off  God's  altar, 
and  who  had  learned  by  their  own  expe- 
rience that  it  is  possible  for  a  man  to  be 
born  from  above.  "Ye  must  be  born 
again;"  that  is  preeminently  the  dogma 
of  Methodism. 

As  it  has  been  the  last  four  hundred 
years  so  it  was  at  the  beginning.    The  apol- 


1/2  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

ogists  of  the  second  and  third  centuries  were 
stalwart  and  uncompromising  dogmatists. 
How  easy  it  would  have  been  for  Ignatius 
and  Polycarp  and  Justin  Martyr  and  the 
rest  of  them  to  have  said,  We  will  let  the 
dogmas  go;  all  we  desire  is  that  men  should 
be  good.  But  no,  they  chose  rather  to  die 
than  forego  the  joy  of  bearing  testimony 
to  the  fact  that  Christ  died  and  rose  again. 
The  world  was  full  of  specious  philosophies, 
and  men  were  going  up  and  down  the 
lands  teaching  in  elegant  and  rhetorical 
phrases  the  beauty  of  being  good.  Vast 
errors  were  abroad,  protean  in  shape  and 
Cyclopean  in  power,  and  these  followers  of 
Jesus  might  have  avoided  controversy  and 
saved  themselves  from  the  stake  if  they 
had  only  been  willing  to  forget  the  things 
on  which  they  differed  from  other  men 
and  dwell  upon  the  things  on  which  all 
good  men  were  agreed.  It  was  the 
dogmas  of  the  Christian  faith  which  brought 
them  to  the  fire  and  opened  the  gates  of 
heaven. 


The  Place  of  Dogma  in  Preaching     173 

Moreover,  the  new  preaching  of  Chris- 
tianity  with  Christian  dogma  eliminated 
does  not  seem  to  be  working  well.  Never 
have  preachers  preached  so  many  sermons 
on  the  brotherhood  of  man,  and  never  has 
that  phrase  been  so  often  on  human  lips  as 
within  the  last  fifty  years,  and  yet  never 
since  our  republic  was  founded  has  race 
hatred  burned  with  greater  intensity  than 
it  is  burning  now ;  never  have  labor  and 
capital  been  farther  apart,  and  never  has 
the  chasm  between  rich  and  poor,  high  and 
low,  cultivated  and  ignorant,  been  wider 
and  deeper;  never  have  the  unchurched 
masses  been  more  indifferent  to  the  church 
than  to-day.  Applied  Chris "ianity  has 
been  our  theme;  but  ala-.,  v  .  huVvj  had  too 
litf  0  Christianity  t )  apply. 

It  begins  to  look  as  though  there  must 
be  some  fallacy  in  the  argument  that  all 
we  want  is  the  words  of  Jesus.  Again 
and  again  the  changes  have  been  rung  on 
the  thesis  :  "  Let  us  take  the  words  of  Jesus 
and  let  us  shape  our  life  by  them.     Men 


1/4  The  M mister  as  Prophet 

will  never  agree  upon  the  dogmas  of  the 
church,  but  upon  the  words  of  Jesus  all 
good  men  are  at  one.  No  matter  who 
he  was,  how  he  came,  or  how  he  went, 
what  he  said  was  beautiful  and  good. 
Let  us  live  his  life  and  obey  his  word, 
no  matter  whence  he  came."  It  all  sounds 
plausible  enough,  but  when  analyzed  it 
is  nothing  but  the  talk  of  fools,  for  only 
fools  take  up  the  thoughts  and  follow  the 
commands  of  strangers,  not  caring  who 
I  the  strangers  are.  If  one  commands  me  to 
go  and  preach  his  gospel,  and  if  necessary 
lay  down  my  life  in  the  doing  of  it,  I  want 
to  know  first  of  all  who  he  is  and  whether 
all  power  has  been  granted  unto  him  both 
in  heaven  and  on  earth. 

The  first  question  which  meets  a  man 
A  ho  thinks  is.  Who  is  Jesus  —  is  he 
mere  man,  apparition,  chimera,  emana- 
tion, deceiver,  demigod,  or  God's  only 
begotten  Son  who  "  for  us  men  and  for 
our  salvation  came  down  from  heaven, 
and  was  incarnate  by  the  Holy  Ghost  of 


The  Place  of  Dogma  in  Preaching     175 

the  Virgin  Mary  and  was  made  man "  ? 
Who  is  he  ?  Has  the  church  any  clean- 
cut  answer  to  that  question  ?  Is  it  possible 
that  she  has  lived  her  life  and  done  her 
work  for  two  thousand  years  and  still  is 
all  at  sea  in  regard  to  the  person  of  the 
one  she  counts  her  Lord?  If  she  has  a 
clean-cut  conception  of  who  and  what  he  is, 
then  that  is  dogma,  and  the  dogma  of 
Christ's  person  becomes  the  center  of  all 
effective  and  truly  Christian  preaching. 

The  words  of  Jesus  are  indeed  important, 
but  chiefly  because  of  the  light  they  throw 
on  Jesus'  person.  Take  his  words  as  so 
many  ethical  precepts  and  try  to  plant  them 
in  the  stony  hearts  of  men,  and  egregious 
and  tragic  failure  is  inevitable.  No  such 
blunder  was  committed  by  the  apostles. 
They  knew  the  words  of  Jesus,  but  they 
did  not  rely  upon  them  for  the  conversion 
of  the  world.  It  is  remarkable  that  Peter 
uses  hardly  any  of  the  words  of  Jesus  in 
his  letters.  Neither  does  John,  neither 
does  James.     Even  Paul  quotes  him  only 


1^6  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

twice,  and  then  to  the  extent  of  scarcely  a 
dozen  words.  "  I  am  determined  to  know 
Christ,  not  his  parables  or  his  discourses, 
his  maxims  or  his  speeches,  but  the  Lord 
himself  who  loved  me  and  gave  himself  for 
me." 

Paul's  one  ambition  was  to  know  hiniy 
and  the  power  of  his  resurrection,  and 
the  fellowship  of  his  suffering  being 
made  conformable  unto  his  death.  It  is 
Christ  who  is  the  hope  of  glory.  It  is 
Christ  in  whom  we  can  do  all  things.  For 
him  to  live  is  Christ,  and  to  die  is  gain,  be- 
cause death  will  tighten  the  union  between 
his  soul  and  Christ.  It  is  not  the  words  of 
Jesus  which  Paul  treasures  and  extols,  but 
the  life  that  is  hid  with  Christ  in  God.  It 
is  not  the  words  of  Jesus,  but  the  dogma 
of  the  incarnation  which  is  the  center  of 
Paul's  theology  and  the  crown  and  glory 
of  all  his  preaching.  Harnack  is  falla- 
cious when  in  the  Contemporary  Review 
of  April,  1903,  he  says,  "It  is  more  impor- 
tant to  ponder  on   the  words,  *  If  ye  love 


The  Place  of  Dogma  in  Preaching     177 

me,  ye  will  keep  my  commandments,'  and 
to  order  our  lives  in  conformnty  with  them 
than  to  press  the  inscrutable  and  venerable 
formulas." 

Yes,  but  to  order  our  lives  in  con- 
formity with  the  words  of  Jesus  —  ah, 
there's  the  rub  !  Unless  we  die  with  him 
how  can  we  rise  with  him,  unless  we  suffer 
with  him  how  can  we  reign  with  him,  and 
what  will  induce  us  to  suffer  with  him 
except  our  behef  in  him  as  one  who,  exist- 
ing "in  the  form  of  God,  counted  not  the 
being  on  an  equality  with  God,  a  thing  to 
be  grasped,  but  emptied  himself,  taking 
the  form  of  a  servant,  being  made  in  the 
likeness  of  men ;  and,  being  found  in 
fashion  as  a  man,  he  humbled  himself, 
becoming  obedient  unto  death, —  yea,  the 
death  of  the  cross." 

"  ReHgion,"  says  Matthew  Arnold,  is 
"morality  touched  with  emotion,  lit  up 
and  enkindled  and  made  much  more  pow- 
erful by  emotion."  Yes,  but  how  is  one  to 
get  the  emotion  ?     Whence  is  it  to  come  t 


178  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

Not  from  beautiful  precepts  such  as  "Love 
your  enemies,"  or  *'  Love  your  neighbor  as 
yourself,"  or  "  If  you  would  save  your  life, 
lose  it,"  but  from  the  loving  heart  of  a  per- 
son who  becomes  the  life  of  our  life  and 
the  love  of  our  love.  Men  are  not  saved  by 
words,  but  by  a  person.  What  they  need 
is  a  restored  relationship  to  God.  Only  as 
we  can  persuade  them  that  God  is  in  Christ 
reconciling  the  world  to  himself  does  the 
fire  burn  on  the  altar,  and  human  brother- 
hood become  possible.  Every  man  of 
power  in  the  pulpit  from  Ignatius  down  to 
Dwight  L.  Moody  has  been  mighty  in  his 
dogmatism.  Seizing  clean-cut  definite 
truths  which  have  received  the  sanction  of 
the  body  of  believers,  they  have  so  pressed 
these  upon  the  hearts  of  their  hearers  as 
to  make  them  the  power  of  God  unto 
salvation  to  every  one  willing  to  believe. 
When,  therefore,  a  good  ministerial 
brother  in  the  Outlook  asks,  "Is  not  belief 
in  the  unceasing  presence  of  a  divine  in- 
telligence active  in  power  and  boundless  in 


The  Place  of  Dogma  in  Preaching     179 

love  enough  ? "  the  answer  is  No !  It  is 
Christ  and  him  crucified  which  forms  the 
preacher's  message,  and  leaving  Christ  out 
he  abdicates  the  high  position  to  which  he 
has  been  called.  A  preacher  must  have 
impulse,  power,  and  passion, —  these  three, 
and  all  these  three  come  only  in  fullest 
measure  from  the  cross.  The  incarnation, 
the  trinity,  redemption  through  the  blood 
of  Christ,  immortality  through  union  with 
the  Son  of  God,  the  Christian  church, 
Christ's  body, —  these  are  not  golden-tinted 
exhalations  floating  on  the  surface  of  the 
great  river  of  human  speculation,  bubbles 
to  be  toyed  with  for  a  season  and  blown  to 
nothingness  by  the  gales  of  a  scientific  age ; 
they  are  outcroppings  of  the  Eternal 
granite  on  which  the  universe  is  built. 
Blessed  is  the  preacher  who  plants  his  feet 
on  these !  A  pulpit  built  on  these  is  built 
on  rock,  and  no  matter  how  the  winds  may 
blow  or  the  rains  descend,  that  pulpit  will 
stand  forever ! 

When    we    open    our    New   Testament 


i8o  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

we  are  ushered  at  once  into  the  presence 
of  a  company  of  dogmatists.  Not  one  of 
them  is  vague  or  limp  or  gelatinous.  Lis- 
ten to  Simon  Peter  preaching  to  the  peo- 
ple of  Jerusalem,  "  There  is  no  name 
under  heaven  which  is  given  among  men 
wherein  ye  must  be  saved."  Oh,  the  nar- 
rowness of  the  man !  The  temper  of 
Peter  was  the  temper  of  all.  Listen  to 
the  man  who  lay  with  his  head  on  Jesus* 
bosom  in  the  upper  chamber  at  the  last 
supper:  "Who  is  the  liar  but  he  that 
denieth  that  Jesus  is  the  Christ  ?  He  is 
antichrist  that  denieth  the  Father  and 
the  Son.  Whosoever  denieth  the  Son 
hath  not  the  Father."  And  Paul  is  Uke 
John.  Listen  to  him  as  he  writes  to  the 
Galatians,  "  Though  an  angel  from  heaven 
preached  any  other  Gospel  to  you  than 
that  which  we  have  preached  unto  you, 
let  him  be  accursed."  And  fearing  that 
some  one  in  the  church  might  think  that 
he  was  heated  and  hasty  he  says,  "  Now 
let  me  say  that  again." 


The  Place  of  Dogma  in  Preaching     i8i 

Wherever  Paul  went  he  preached  dogma. 
He  says  to  the  Roman  world,  "  I  am  not 
ashamed  of  the  Gospel."     There  were  a 
thousand  reasons  why  he  might  have  been 
ashamed  of  it.     The  idea  that  a  dead  Jew 
should  come  to  life  again,  get  up  out  of 
his  grave,  and  by  and  by  float  upward  into 
the  clouds  was  apparently  about  the  most 
silly  and  preposterous  story  that  one  man 
could  tell  to  another.     And  this  was  the 
story   that   St.    Paul  had  to  tell,  and    he 
says,    I    am   not   ashamed   of    it.      Why, 
Paul,  were  you  not  ashamed.?      Because 
it  is  the  power  of  God  unto  salvation  to 
every  one   that   believes.      Whenever   he 
writes   a   letter  he   puts   dogma  first   and 
ethics  second.     The  first  eleven  chapters 
of  his  letter  to  the  Romans  are  dogmatic. 
After   he   has   laid  down  his  dogmas  he 
is  ready  for  his  ethics.     "I  beseech  you 
therefore,   brethren,    by    the    mercies    of 
God—"      Or  take  the  fifteenth  chapter 
of     I    Corinthians  —  that   immortal   argu- 
ment for  the  resurrection. 


1 82  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

Round  by  round  he  climbs  until  at  the 
top  he  shouts,  "  Therefore,  my  beloved 
brethren."  It  is  only  when  we  stand  on 
the  dogma  of  the  resurrection  that  we  have 
power  sufficient  to  enable  us  to  be  immov- 
able, and  to  always  abound  in  the  work  of 
the  Lord.  Or  take  his  letter  to  the  Ephe- 
sians ;  the  first  three  chapters  are  dog- 
matic. After  the  dogmas  are  stated, 
"  I  therefore  beseech  you  that  ye  walk 
worthy  of  the  vocation  wherewith  ye  are 
called."  Or  take  his  letter  to  the  Philip- 
pians,  **  Let  this  mind  be  in  you  which 
was  also  in  Christ  Jesus,  who,  being  in 
the  form  of  God,  thought  it  not  robbery 
to  be  equal  with  God,  made  himself  of 
no  reputation,  and  took  upon  him  the 
form  of  a  servant."  It  is  after  looking 
once  more  at  the  face  of  Christ  that  he 
ventures  to  tell  the  Philippians  what  they 
ought  to  (do. 

When  he  wants  money  he  takes  his 
stand  upon  dogma.  '*  You  remember  the 
grace  of   our   Lord   Jesus,   how   that  he 


The  Place  of  Dogma  in  Preaching     183 

was  rich,  yet  for  your  sakes  he  became 
poor,  that  ye  through  his  poverty  might 
be  rich."  He  did  not  ask  people  to 
give  money  because  it  v\^as  right,  or 
because  people  were  suffering,  or  be- 
cause it  was  a  fine  thing  ethically  for 
them  to  do.  He  stood  on  the  incarnation 
whenever  he  asked  for  money.  Or  take 
his  letter  to  the  Colossians :  "  If  ye  be 
risen  with  Christ,  seek  those  things  which 
are  above.  Set  your  affection  on  things 
above,  not  on  things  on  the  earth,  for 
ye  are  dead,  and  your  life  is  hid  with 
Christ  in  God."  See  how  he  buttresses 
his  ethics  both  in  front  and  behind  by 
glowing  visions  of  the  risen  Christ.  That 
is  the  way  to  preach.  No  other  kind  of 
preaching  is  really  Christian  preaching. 

Where  did  the  apostles  get  this  dogmatic 
temper  and  this  dogmatic  habit.?  They  ,^ 
got  it  from  the  Lord  himself.  He  is  the 
crowned  dogmatist  of  history.  Even  the 
stupid  people  of  his  day  could  see  that  he 
was  unlike  all  other  teachers   in  that  he 


184  TJie  Minister  as  Prophet 

spoke  as  one  having  authority.  "  It  hath 
been  said  by  them  of  old  time  —  but  I  say 
unto  you  —  Other  men  have  said  this  and 
that,  but  I  say  unto  you  — "  He  lifted 
himself  above  prophet,  priest,  and  law- 
giver, above  the  exalted  head  of  Moses 
himself.  And  lo,  before  men  were  aware 
of  what  he  was  doing,  he  had  seated  him- 
self on  the  throne  of  God.  "  Many  will 
say  to  me  in  that  day.  Lord,  Lord,  and 
then  will  I  say  unto  them,  I  never  knew 
you." 

To  his  disciples  in  the  upper  chamber  he 
said,  *'  As  my  Father  hath  sent  me,  even 
so  send  I  you."  And  what  he  said  to  them 
he  says  to  us.  Before  the  cloud  received 
him  from  their  sight,  he  said  :  "  All  power 
is  given  unto  me,  both  in  heaven  and  on 
earth — Go,  therefore!"  He  stood  on 
dogma  in  issuing  his  commands.  Without 
the  dogma  we  have  not  the  disposition  or 
the  power  to  go.  I  do  not  believe  that  a 
man  has  the  right  to  preach  the  Gospel 
of  the  Son  of  God  unless  he  can  preach 


The  Place  of  Dogma  m  Preaching     185 

dogmatically.  It  seems  to  me  that  the 
preacher  is  bound  to  know  some  things, 
and  to  know  them  thoroughly.  I  do  not 
believe  a  man  has  a  right  to  preach  who 
cannot  speak  the  great  truths  of  the  Chris- 
tian revelation  in  accents  which  do  not 
waver  and  with  an  emphasis  that  burns 
with  fervent  heat. 

In  saying  all  this  I  would  not  imply 
that  everything  is  fixed  down  to  the  minut- 
est details.  I  would  leave  large  spaces  in 
which  the  human  mind  may  work.  Our 
fathers  made  the  blunder  of  being  certain 
on  too  many  things.  There  is  room  for 
agnosticism  within  the  area  of  well-defined 
limits.  Christianity  has  its  mysteries. 
Life's  horizon  is  robed  in  mists,  and  the 
rehgion  of  the  man  of  Galilee  does  not  dis- 
sipate the  mists.  We  see  through  a  glass 
darkly,  and  no  matter  how  much  we  know 
we  know  only  in  part.  "  It  doth  not  yet 
appear  what  we  shall  be."  In  the  heavens 
of  the  Christian  world  there  are  clouds  of 
golden  glory  into  which  we  look  awestruck 


1 86  The  Minister  as  Prophet 

and  with  eyes  filled  with  wonder ;  but 
there  are  vast  ranges  of  mountain  truth 
whose  glowing  tops  stand  out  sharp  cut 
and  glorious  against  the  sky.  These 
mountain  ranges  are  the  mysteries  which 
were  hidden  from  the  foundation  of  the 
world  and  which  have  been  revealed  to  us 
by  God  in  Jesus  Christ  his  Son.  There 
are  some  things  which  we  know,  and  the 
things  which  we  know  are  the  things 
which  we  must  preach.  Do  we  not  know 
that  God  so  loved  the  world  that  he  gave 
his  only  begotten  Son  that  whosoever 
believeth  in  him  might  not  perish,  but 
have  eternal  life  ?  Do  we  not  know  that 
Christ  died  for  our  sins  and  rose  again  for 
our  justification  t  Mists  hang  heavy  all 
around  the  horizon,  but  there  is  everlast- 
ing granite  beneath  our  feet.  Can  we 
not  sing:  — 

"  There  is  a  fountain  filled  with  blood, 
Drawn  from  Immanuel's  veins  ; 
And  sinners,  plunged  beneath  that  flood. 
Lose  all  their  guilty  stains." 


The  Place  of  Dogma  in  Preaching     187 
Can  we  not  say  with  the  Christian  poet :  — 

"  Oh,  'twas  love,  'twas  wondrous  love, 
The  love  of  God  to  me. 
It  brought  my  Saviour  from  above 
To  die  on  Calvary." 


Date  Due 


^mmy 


^s^s- 


